Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/315

Rh before the natives would leave for their spring hunt for buffalo east of the Rockies.

Under date of March 31, their journal reads: "Several parties were met descending the river in quest of food. They told us that they lived at the great rapids (the cascades), but the scarcity of provisions had induced them to come down in hopes of finding subsistence in the more fertile valley. All living at the rapids, as well as nations above, were in much distress for want of food, having consumed their winter's store of dried fish, and not expecting the return of the salmon before the next full moon which would be on the second of May. This information was not a little embarrassing. From the falls (The Dalles) to the Chopannish Nation, the plains afforded neither deer, elk, nor antelope, for our subsistence. The horses were very poor at this season, and the dogs must be in the same condition, if their food, the dried fish, had failed." These considerations compelled the party to go into camp, and send out their hunters on both sides of the Columbia, from its north bank, opposite the quick sand (Sandy) river. Their purpose being to obtain meat enough to last them to where they had left their horses, and this they did, with the addition of some dogs and wapatOs they were able to secure from the natives by hard bargaining. The eight days they thus delayed they used to good purpose. Captain Clark, acting on information by an Indian of the existence of a large river making in from the south, which they had passed and repassed without having seen it, because of a diamond shaped island lying across its mouth, hired an Indian guide, and returning down the south shore, penetrated the Multnomah (Lower Willamette), to near the present location of Linn ton, and saw evidences in ruined buildings of a much denser population than then existed there, and in the two hundred and twenty-five foot building already men-