Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/343



Lat. 48° N., Long. 117° W., April 3d, 1826.


 * By this time I hope you are once more in England, and that your long voyage has terminated to your satisfaction. Your friends would, no doubt, naturally entertain melancholy thoughts about you, owing to your absence having proved so much longer than was expected; and I know by experience how much you must have felt.

Since you left me there has been no person to join me in my walks, and for several weeks I felt very uncomfortable, being especially grieved at not having seen you before your departure, owing to a hurt that one of my legs received when packing my boxes, and which has troubled me, I am very sorry to say, almost ever since. Although in a state very unfit for enduring much exertion. I left Fort Vancouver on the 22d of October, for the purpose of seeing you in my way to Whitby's Harbor, near the Cheeheelie River. On the evening of the 23d I put ashore at Oak Point to procure a little food, when an Indian gave me your letter, in which you stated your expectation of remaining a few days longer, and as the ship had been seen on that day, I lost no time in hoi ling my kettle, and having re-embarked at 11 P. M.. I was in hopes of reaching the bay before daylight. Unfortunately, the wind was adverse, and my Indians being much fatigued, I did not arrive till 10 o'clock, when I heard, to my great disappointment, that you had left the river only one hour before. I found Tha-a-mu-u, or "the Beard," Concomly's brother, to whom you had spoken of me. He is an old man; at hid request I shaved him, that he might look more like one of King George's chiefs. He accompanied me all the way along the coast, and for sixty miles up the Cheeheelie River, where I crossed a tract of land, near Mount St. Helens, to the Cowalidsk River. which I descended to its junction with the Columbia. This was the most unfortunate trip I ever bad; the season being BO late, and my knee becoming more and more troublesome. I was under the necessity of laying by, as an invalid, for three days, on Cape Foulweather, in a hut made of pine branches and grass. Being unable to go abroad and shoot, I fared, of course, but scantily; some specimens of Procellaria, Larus, and one of Colymbus, which I killed, were spoiled by the excessive rain. The only plant I found, worthy of notice, was an Eriogonum, and I also procured the seeds of several kinds previously in my possession, among them Helonias tenax and a fine large-fruited species of Carex. This excursion took twenty-five days, and reduced me to such a state of weakness, that I could do little more for the season. During the winter, in the short intervals of fair weather, I crawled to the woods, in search for Mosses, but my knowledge of this