Page:The Columbia river , or, Scenes and adventures during a residence of six years on the western side of the Rocky Mountains among various tribes of Indians hitherto unknown (Volume 1).djvu/174

 my presence! Even with a pocket pistol I could have done execution among them. The state of my fingers prevented me from obtaining the covering of grass which I had the two preceding nights: and on this evening I had no shelter whatever to protect me from the heavy dew.

On the following day, the 20th, my course was nearly north-east, and lay through a country more diversified by wood and water. I saw plenty of wild geese, ducks, cranes, curlews, and sparrows, also some hawks and cormorants, and at a distance about fifteen or twenty small deer. The wood consisted of pine, birch, cedar, wild cherries, hawthorn, sweet-willow, honeysuckle, and sumach. The rattlesnakes were very numerous this day, with horned lizards, and grasshoppers; the latter kept me in a constant state of feverish alarm from the similarity of the noise made by their wings to the sound of the rattles of the snake when preparing to dart on its prey. I suffered severely during the day from hunger, and was obliged to chew grass occasionally, which allayed it a little. Late in the evening I arrived at a lake upwards of two miles long, and a mile broad, the shores of which were high, and well wooded with large pine, spruce, and birch. It was fed by two rivulets, from the north, and north-east, in which I