Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/374

 364 JOURNAL AND LETTERS OF DAVID DOUGLAS. that I carried, more than was on my back, and thus equipped I set out for Oakanagan, distant two hundred and fifty miles northwest of this place. It was very re- luctantly that I allowed myself to be dissuaded from ven- turing by water. I however hoped somewhat to shorten the journey, by cutting off the angle between the Colum- bia and Spokan River, especially as the path throughout was likely to be very mountainous and rugged. The heat being extreme, and the night beautifully clear moonlight. I traveled rather more by night than day, starting gen- erally at 2 A. M., and stopping to rest and lie down for a few hours about noonday. Unfortunately, my guide and I could not hold converse, neither knowing a syllable of the other's language. On the second day I arrived at some Indian lodges, just where I wanted to cross the Spokan River, and the people, who were fishing, assisted me in getting the horses over and carried me and all my property to the other side in a canoe, for which I rewarded them with a little tobacco. The country was almost invariably a trackless waste, with scarcely a particle of herbage remaining on the gravelly arid sandy soil. My meals generally consisted of dried salmon and a little tea, which I boiled and then sucked the infusion from the leaves; but for three days after passing the Spokan, I was much distressed for the want of drinkable water. Stagnant pools, often so impregnated with sulphur that not even the thirsty horses would touch it, were all we could find ; and when we did arrive at a tolerable spring, not a twig could be collected for fuel, and I vainly attempted to boil [jn] my little pan with grass, the stems of a large species of Triticwm, Glad should I have been of the shelter of a tent, but, though I carried one, the fatigue of pitching it under such a burning sun was more than I could encounter; and when the water proved such as I could not use, I took nothing,