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 After so many labors and dangers, we deserved a repast. Happily, we found at the encampment all the ingredients that were necessary for a feast—a bag of flour, a large ham, part of a reindeer, cheese, sugar, and tea in abundance, which the gentlemen of the English Company had charitably left behind. While some were employed refitting the barge, others prepared the dinner; and in about an hour we found ourselves snugly seated and stretched out around the kettles and roasts, laughing and joking about the summersets on the mountains, and the accidents on the Portage. I need not tell you, that they described me as the most clumsy and awkward traveller in the band.

Three beautiful rivers unite at this place: the Columbia, coming from the south-east—the Portage river, from the north-east, and the Canoe river from the north-west. We were surrounded by a great number of magnificent mountains, covered with perpetual snow, and rising from twelve to sixteen thousand feet {212} above the level of the ocean. The Hooker and the Brown are the highest, the latter measuring sixteen thousand feet.[156]

Very Rev. and dear Father Provincial, your humble brother in Jesus Christ,

P. J. De Smet, S. J.

No. XVII

A. M. D. G.

St. Paul's Station, near Colville,} May 29th, 1846.}

—The Columbia at the Boat Encampment is 3,600 feet above the level