Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/85

79 JOURNAL OF DAVID DOUGLAS. 79 them to find wild honey and grasshoppers, both of which serve for their winter food. Sunday, October 1st. Very heavy dew during the night, but the day clear and pleasant, with generally a refresh- ing westerly wind. I observed some trees of Arbutus laurifolia much larger than I had ever before seen fif- teen inches to two feet in diameter, and thirty to forty-five feet high, with fruit nearly ripe : they seem to thrive best in a deep rich black loam near springs, and on a gravelly bottom. Passed at noon some Indians digging the roots of Phalangium Quamash. On such journeys as these, I am sorry to say that Sunday is only known by the men changing their linen, while such as can read peruse in the evening some religious tract, the tenets of which, generally speaking, are agreeable to the tenets of the church of Rome. In the dusk I saw a very large Grisly Bear (Ursus ferox) enter a low huminock of brushwood at some little distance, but it was becoming so dark that I thought it better to leave him unmolested ; and though I went in search of the animalnext morning by daylight, I could find nothing of him. 2d to the 7th. ^During this period little occurred worthy of note; we generally walked about twenty miles a day, and fared scantily, finding the deer very scarce and shy. At noon of this day (7th) we were joined by J. Baptiste McKay and two Iroquois ; he informs me that he has already given one of his hunters who went to the Umpt- qua or Arguilar River, orders* to bring home cones of the large pine for me. Pinus resinosa here attains a height of one hundred and thirty feet, and a diameter of four or five. On one of these trees I killed a beautiful Grey Squirrel, measuring two feet from tail to snout, and saw a curious striped variety, and also a flying squirrel, but could not secure either of these. Typha angustifolia and Nymphsea advena are not uncommon in small lakes. We