Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/203

197 JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE TO N. W. AMERICA. 197 10th to 13th. The Indians continue to behave in the most quiet & inof[f]ensive manner. & have supplied us most abundantly with fishes, ducks & all the vegetables their country afforded. The chief is an old man named Squastin, who visited us every morning, bringing us a present of fish & berries, & he is by no means so greedy a beggar as Moaquilla of Nootka. As none of the boats ventured ashore I had no oppor- tunity of examining the productions of the country. I tried the plan I had adopted at Nootka & was more suc- cessful. Observing a mouse in one of the canoes I pur- chased it, & in the course of a few hours I was plentifully supplied with specimens of Uria troile, Colymbus cornutus, three species -of Mus. No. 1: intestines with numerous convolutions, stomach capacious, liver bilobed, ears very short. No. 2 : Tail longer than body, back brown, belly white, ears long, liver 5 lobed. No. 3 I did not dissect. As there is little doubt that some of these mice are non- descript it is much to be regretted that some of^them were to[o] putrid to admit of a carefull dissection. I may here mention that I had an opportunity of removing all doubt as to the authenticity of the Mus bursarus of Shaw, as I saw a very fine specimen of it in the possession of Mr. Douglass. The dissection of the Colymbus cornutus presented the following appearances : oesophagus wide & dilatable, & furnished with many longitudinal plicae, which all termi- nate in a ring around the cardiac orifice of the stomach. The stomach is rather muscular, the internal surface fur- nished with many small glands. Gizzard very muscular. Convolutions of the intestines numerous. Liver consists of two large & nearly equal lobes. This part of the coast appears to be extremely populous; in sailing down the straits from Tatooch to Port Discovery we never lost sight of the smoke of villages; & whenever