Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/120

86 considerable numbers during the spring and summer, the party turned their faces homeward on the 23d of March, 1806. The commander posted upon the fort a notice which read as follows:

"The object of this last is that through the medium of some civilised person who may see the same, it may be made known to the world that the party consisting of the persons whose names are hereunto annexed and who were sent out by the Government of the United States to explore the interior of the continent of North America, did penetrate the same by way of the Missouri and Columbia Rivers, to the discharge of the latter into the Pacific Ocean, at which they arrived on the 14th day of November, 1805, and departed on their return to the United States by the same route by which they had come."

They also gave to the chiefs of the Clatsops and Chinooks certificates, to which they attached great importance and which were afterwards exhibited to other explorers, setting forth the just and hospitable treatment which these Indians had accorded the party.

The return from Fort Clatsop to the Missouri was in the main a pleasant and successful journey without extraordinary event, except the fact that upon their return they discovered the Willamette River, which, strange to say, had eluded their observation on their journey down the River in November. The journal contains the somewhat quaint statement that the chief cultivable region which they discovered in Oregon was Wapatoo Island, now known as Sauvie's Island, at the mouth of the Willamette. They express the conviction that that fertile tract of country and the region adjoining might sometime support a population of fifty thousand people. They seem to