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XXII

BACK TO CIVILISATION

The canoes were loaded, and at one o'clock in the afternoon of Sunday, the 23d day of March, 1806, Lewis and Clark took final leave of Fort Clatsop.

Back past Cathlamet they came, where Queen Sally still watched by her totem posts; past Oak Point on Fanny's Island, named by Clark, where two Springs later a Boston ship made the first white settlement in Oregon. Slowly the little flotilla paddled up, past Coffin Rock, immemorial deposit of Indian dead, past snowy St. Helens, a landmark at sea for the ship that would enter the harbour.

Flowers were everywhere, the hillsides aglow with red flowering currants that made March as gay as the roses of June. The grass was high, and the robins were singing.

At sunset, March 30, they camped on a beautiful prairie, the future site of historic Vancouver. Before them the Columbia was a shimmer of silver. Behind, rose the dim, dark Oregon forest. The sharp cry of the sea-gull rang over the waters, and the dusky pelican and the splendid brown albatross were sailing back to the sea.

Herds of elk and deer roamed on the uplands and in woody green islands below, where flocks of ducks, geese, and swans were digging up the lily-like wapato with their bills.

With laboured breath, still bending to the oar, on the first of April they encountered a throng of Indians crowding down from above, gaunt, hollow-eyed, almost starved, greedily tarrying to pick up the bones and refuse meat thrown from the camp of the whites.

"Katah mesika chaco?" inquired Captain Lewis.

"Halo muck-a-muck," answered the forlorn Indians. "Dried fish all gone. No deer. No elk. No a