Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/238

222 one of his friends. Leaving this fishery with a good supply, we were shortly overtaken lry another party of the same tribe, as we supposed. Some of the young fellows drove their horses by us, yelling in a spirit of mischievous fun. The women came up sedately, leading pack horses. They let us know that they had been out gathering fruit by showing us cakes of what I judged to be choke cherries and service berries beaten together and dried in cakes of about four inches across and three quarters of an inch thick. The fishhooks were again successful as a medium of exchange. We passed portions of Boise River that day as rich with salmon, as a food supply, as the plains of the Platte had been with buffalo beef.

Near Fort Boise a single young Indian signed for us to stop and go with him into the timber; and led the way to a camp fire under cottonwood trees. He moved away the fire and the live coals, then began to carefully remove the sandy soil, uncovering a fair-sized salmon baked in the hot sand. Putting this carefully aside, he dug down further and unearthed a beaver skin, which he wished to sell. While we tried to convey to him by signs that we did not wish to buy the skin, his wife and a chubby little boy came timidly from the river. We made Fort Boise that evening, and mustered among us enough money to purchase twenty pounds of Oregon flour. The trader in charge refused to sell a little dried elk meat. It was "for the master," he said. We forded the Snake at the emigrant crossing below the little adobe trading post. A duck killed at Willow Springs the fourth morning from Fort Hall was our only game until this evening. Mr. Crockett killed a little cottontail rabbit.

The road so far from Fort Hall had not been very bad, and being generally down hill we made good travel. On entering Burnt-river Canyon, however, it meandered a good deal, and often followed the bed of the stream to