Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/342

 whole aspect of vegetation is quite dissimilar from that of the coast. To the southeast, at a distance of ninety miles, is seen a ridge of high snowy mountains, which, running in a southwesterly direction for three hundred miles, terminate near the ocean. There I might hope to find all or most of the plants of the Rocky Mountains, and Mr. Black has kindly commenced arrangements for my making a journey thither early in June, which will occupy fifteen to twenty days.

Thursday, the 30th.—We proceeded early this morning on our way, I walking generally on the bank of the river, as I found the cold very prejudicial to my stiff knee, which was the better for a little exercise. The country, too, was quite a plain, as far as the junction of Lewis and Clarke's River, which is a fine stream, from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty yards wide in many places, and very rapid, abounding, as well as many of its tributaries, with salmon. Its whole course, from its source in the Rocky Mountains till it joins the Columbia, is not less than fifteen hundred miles. The soil in this neighborhood is a light brown earth, which the wind frequently blows up in mounds or hills fifty feet high, whereon grow several species of Lupinus and Oenothera, with some singular bulbous-rooted plants, and occasional shrubs of the beautiful Purshia tridentata, which is the largest vegetable production seen here. The same aspect of country continues as far as the Priest's Rapid, which we reached on the 1st of April, where it becomes mountainous, with scarcely a vestige of herbage or verdure of any kind, except in the valleys. The rocks which bound the river are of limestone and very rugged, and this is considered one of the most dangerous parts of the whole river. During the time occupied in making the portage of nine miles, I wrote to my friend Doctor Scouler of Glasgow: