Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/365

 JOURNAL AND LKTTEKS OF DAVID DOUGLAS. 355 by the Chenook Indians, and above it a kind of gown of dressed leather, like the shirts of the men, but with wider sleeves. The children fled from me with indescribable fear, and, till assured of my amicable intentions, only one man and one woman could be seen, to whom I gave a few beads, brass rings, and a pipe of tobacco. Arrangements having finally been made, I set off, and, in three days, reached the snowy mountains, where I was on the whole disappointed, finding little that was different from what I had seen a fortnight before; and, after suf- fering severely from pain in my eyes, which rendered reading or writing very difficult, except in the morning, and haunted continually by the thought that our people, who were daily expected from the coast, would have ar- rived and brought my letters, I returned to my camp on the Walla-wallah on Monday, the 3d of July, and spent the rest of that week in botanizing in that neighborhood and packing my seeds, for which I had to make a box, and drying and securing my plants. On the following Sunday, the 9th, an opportunity hav- ing offered of sending to the coast, I wrote to Mr. Sabine, giving a short account of my proceedings since I had last addressed him, exactly a month previously ; but as this letter is only a repetition of what my journal 1ms just stated, it is unnecessary to copy it here. In hopes that by going two or three days' journey down the river, instead of prosecuting my researches for plants, in an opposite direction, I might meet the party who are expected from the coast, and thus earlier obtain possession of my much desired letters, I embarked at 10 A. M. of Monday, the 10th, and, the river being at its height, pro- ceeded for two or three hours at the rate of twelve miles an hour, when the great swell obliged us to put on shore. And as the same cause rendered it impossible to fish for salmon, a horse was killed, on whose flesh, with a draught