Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/337

Rh to Hudson Bay, and Mr. Francis Ermetinger, who was bound for the interior, with two boats and fourteen men, I started from Fort Vancouver, on Monday, the 20th, at 4 o'clock at noon [?]. Owing to the rain and adverse wind, and a strong current against us, it was the evening of the next day before we reached the Grand Rapids. Here the scenery is grand beyond description. The high mountains are covered with Pines of several kinds, some of great magnitude, with their lofty wide-spreading branches loaded with snow; while a rainbow stretches over the vapour formed by the agitated waters, which rush with furious speed over the shattered rocks and through the deep channel of the stream, producing a melancholy though pleasing echo through the still and woody valley, where the vivid green of the Pine contrasts agreeably with the reflection of the snow.

On Thursday, the 23d, we proceeded on our voyage with a strong westerly wind, which enabled us to hoist a sail, and reached the lower part of the Great Falls at dusk, where we camped in a small cove, under a shelving rock. Fortunately, the night was fine and the moon bright, which was the more agreeable, as the wind would not allow of our tent being pitched. Here we were placed in a dangerous predicament, from the natives, who collected in unusually large numbers, and showed every disposition to be troublesome, because they did not receive so ample a supply of tobacco as they had expected. We were obliged to watch the whole night. Having a few of my small wax tapers, on which I lay a great value, still remaining, I lighted one, and sat down to write to Mr. Murray of Glasgow, and to arrange in paper some Mosses that I had collected the preceding evening. Daylight was a most gladsome sight, as may be imagined, after spending the hours of darkness surrounded by at least four hundred and fifty savages, whose manners announced anything but amicable