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 8 THE CONDOR Vol. XVIII was thus described by Townsend: "Captain Wyeth and Milton Sublette took the lead, Mr. N Juttall] and myself rode beside them; then the men in double file, each leading, with a line, two horses heavily laden, and Captain Thing (Captain W's assistant), brought up the rear. The band of missionaries, with their horned cattle, rode along the flanks. "# Later on at Ft. Hall some of the caravan Went on ahead leaving 30 men and 116 horses in Wyeth's party during the latter days of the march. They left Independence on April 28, reaching Fort Vancouver on the Columbia on September 16, after the usual vicissitudes of transcontinental travel. The narrative of their journey written and pub- lished by Townsend is most interesting reading, full of incidents of buffalo hunting and of the habits and peculiarities of the various tribes of Indians with which they came in contact. Townsend got many birds e route, a number of which were new, and many others at Fort Vancouver and elsewhere about the mouth of the Colum- bia. Unfortunately he gives but little information about birds in his narrative, apparently deeming ornithology of but little general interest, and only once does he refer to his collection. This is in a description of a violent storm which overtook them on the Columbia below Fort Walla Walla during which Mr. Nuttall's dried plants were somewhat damaged, "but", he says, "my bale of birds escaped without any material injury". The Band-tailed Pigeon appealed to the sportsman in him, and he writes of it on May 21, 1835, as "very abundant near the river, found in flocks of fifty to sixty and perching upon the dead trees 'along the margin of the stream. They are feeding upon the buds of the balsam poplar; are very fat and excel- ]ent eating. In the course of the morning, and without leaving the canoe, I killed enough to supply our people with provisions for two days"$. The Pin- tail duck also occurred in abundance, and Townsend and an Indian killed 26 by simultaneous discharge of their guns. There has been some comment among our friends the herpetologists as t why Townsend failed to procure any reptiles. A close perusal of his narra- tive clears up any doubt on this point. In speaking of the behavior of one of their men after reaching the Columbia he says: "His appetite 'for ardent spirits was of the most inordinate kind. During the journey across the coun- try I constantly carried a large two-gallon bottle of whiskey, in which I depos- ited various kinds of lizards and serpents, and when we arrived at the Colum- bia the vessel was almost full of these crawling creatures. I left the bottle on board the brig when I paid my first visit to the Willammet falls, and on my return found that he had decanted the liquor from the precious reptiles which I had destined for immortality, and he and one of his pot companions had been 'happy' upon it for a whole day .... I did not discover the theft until too late to save my specimens, which were in consequence all destroyed."$ Townsend and Nuttall visited the Sandwich Islands during the winter of 1834-5. Nuttall then visited California, stopping at Monterey, Santa Barbara and San Diego, and returning round the Horn reached home in 1836. Town- send remained until 1837, and then returned by the same route, reaching home November 17. Nuttall obtained specimens of the Yellow-billed Magpie and the Tricol- ored Redwing which he gave to Audubon who published them in his great $do. p. 220. $do. p. 224.
 * Townsend's Narrative, Phila. 1839, p. 27.