Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/59

Rh in the Oregon Territory. Wyeth himself was en route to the Columbia overland, with a company of thirty-two men.

A huge kite of cotton cloth was hoisted for a signal to passing vessels, and for several days the Sultana's men were busied in saving the goods coming ashore from the wreck. Exploration of the reef was next in order. It proved to be a lagoon island about thirty-five miles in circumference, with a reef extending around it from twenty to one hundred feet in width, enclosing the lagoon. There was no fresh water on the island and only one kind of edible fruit, about the size of a walnut and having one seed in the center. Fish were plentiful of several species, the little pools on the reef, which were filled by the nightly high tide, containing so many that the bare toes of the sailors were nibbled by them as they waded about in the. water. One fish in particular, about nine inches long and three in width an excellent pan fish was of a green color. It was very shy and when the sailors tried to catch it it jumped out on the rocks and by repeated saltations reached the sea. The method of the natives in taking these was with the spear, which they threw from a distance of twenty-five or thirty feet. But the sailors impounded them by building around the basins a wall just too high for them to vault over, when enough of them could be taken any morning for the day's supply.

For a table delicacy the castaways had "geography," which is ship biscuit charred and soaked in a pot of water. They had tea also, but its flavor was not very good, having been wet with salt water and dried, and finally steeped in water that was brackish. But these privations were the least of their troubles; and really their predicament did not seem as serious to these young adventure-seeking souls as it did to their captain, who