Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/279

Rh in England, with a draught net, also made of Apocynum bark, and floated with hits of wood, particularly where the bottom of the river is free from rocks or stumps.

The Sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus, Richardson) attains a lenght of ten feet, and a weight of 400 to 500 pounds in the Columbia. One of these was presented me by my Indian friend, Cockqua, some months ago, and as to eat the whole was a feat even surpassing the powers of "one of King George's chiefs," I requested him to select the part which he considered the best, and cook it for me. This request he took as a great compliment, and I must do him the justice to say that he afforded me the most comfortable meal I had enjoyed for a considerable time, out of the head and spine of this fish.

A small Trout is also found abundantly in the creeks of the Columbia.

Among the most interesting of the plants which I gathered last year is a species of Tobacco, the Nicotiana pulverulenta of Pursh, correctly surmised by Nuttall to grow on this side of the Rocky Mountains; though whether this country, or the Rocky Mountains themselves, or the banks of the Missouri, be its original habitat, I am quite unable to say. I am, however, inclined to think that it is indigenous to the mountains. where the hunters say that it grows plentifully, especially in the country of the Snake Indians, who may have brought it from the headwaters of the Missouri, which they annually visit, and distributed it thus in both directions, east and west of the great chain of the Rocky Mountains. I first saw a single plant of it in the hand of an Indian at the Great Falls of the Columbia, but though I offered two ounces of manufactured tobacco, an enormous remuneration, he would on no account part with it. The Nicotiana is never sowed by the Indians near the villages lest it should be pulled and used before it comes to perfect maturity: they select for its cultivation an open place in the wood, where they burn a dead tree or stump, and strewing the ashes over the ground, plant the tobacco there. Fortunately, I happened to detect one of these little plantations, and supplied myself, without delay or immediate