Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/103

97 JOURNAL OF DAVID DOUGLAS. 97 Twelve days of extreme misery, during which we travelled with great labour, under all the disadvantages of hunger, cold, and rain, brought me back to the Columbia, where I arrived much disheartened in consequence of having lost nearly the whole of my collections when crossing the River Sandiam, one of the tributaries of the Multnomak. On reaching the Fort, I had the satisfaction of finding cdmfortable letters from my friends in England. Here I staid till the 9th of December, when the hope of replacing some of the objects which I had lost, induced me to re- visit the coast; but this was a still more unfortunate undertaking than the first, as I had the disaster to be wrecked in my canoe, and returned home, sick from the effects of wet and cold, having added nothing to my col- lection but one new species of Ledum L. dealbatum. 2 From this date to the 6th of March I spent my time in the same way as the preceding winter, when I once more visited the sea and was again driven back by bad weather, having failed for the third and last time. The remainder of my time on the coast was spent in packing up my collections. 2 No such plant appears in the collection, nor is it described in Mr. Douglas' rMSS,