Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 37.djvu/122

100 said he had prepared for us by making two beadsteads of bunks, on hearing of our approach. It was the west bastion of the fort full of port holes in the sides, but no windows & filled with fire arms. A large cannon alway loaded stood behind the door, by one of the holes. These things did not move me. Im so well pleased with the possession of a room to shelter us from the scorching sun that I scarcely noticed them. Having arranged our things we were soon called to a feast of mellons the finest I think I ever saw or tasted. The mushmelon was the largest measuring eighteen in length, fifteen round the small end & nineteen arround the large. You may be assured we were not any of us satisfied or willing to leave the table untill we had filled our plates with chips. At four o'clock we were callid to dine I[t] consisted of pork, potatoes, beets, cabbage, turnips, tea bread & butter, my favourite dinner & much like the last dinner I eat with Mother Loomis. I am thus particular in my discription of eatibles, so that you may be assured we find something to eat beyond the Rocky mountains as well as at home. We find plenty of salt but very many here prefer to do almost & some entirely without it on their meat and other eatibles.”

On their early morning gallop the party quite certainly forded the Walla Walla River at what has come to be known by late travelers as the Threemile bridge. The gardens mentioned were on the north side of the river (also upon a small island) and were irrigated; the first irrigation in the present Walla Walla County, perhaps in all eastern Washington and Oregon. The fort itself was located on a broad flat of sandy and gravelly ground which produced nothing except scattering, stunted sagebrush. Pierre Chrysologue Pambrun, then with rank of chief trader, had been an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company with many years in the Saskatchewan and New Caledonia districts in Canada. During the next four years he and his efficient wife (of the Cree nation) became very kind and helpful neighbors to Mrs. Whitman at Waiilatpu, twenty-five miles away. Mention is made of his children's attending school at the mission, although Pambrun was a Catholic. He died in 1841 from