Wednesday April 16th. 1806.
About 8 A.M. Capt. Clark passed the river with the two
interpreters, the indian woman and nine men in order to trade
with the natives for their horses, for which purpose he took
with him a good part of our stock of merchandize. I remained
in camp; sent out the hunters very early in the morning, and
set Sergts. Gass and Pryor with some others at work to make a
parsel of packsaddles. twelve horses will be sufficient to transport
our baggage and some pounded fish which we intend taking
with us as a reserved store for the rocky mountains. I
was visited today by several of the natives, and amused myself
in making a collection of the esculent plants in the neighbourhood
such as the Indians use, a specemine of which I preserved.
I also met with sundry other plants which were strangers to
me which I also preserved, among others there is a currant
which is now in blume and has [a] yellow blossom something
like the yellow currant of the Missouri but is a different
speceis.[23]
Reubin Feilds returned in the evening and brought
with him a large grey squ[i]rrel and two others of a kind I
had never before seen. they are a size less than the grey
squirrel common to the middle atlantic states and of a pided
grey and yellowish brown colour, in form it resembles our
grey squ[i]rrel precisely. I had them skined leaving the head
feet and tail to them and placed in the sun to dry. Joseph
Feilds brought me a black pheasant which he had killed; this
I found on examination to be the large black or dark brown
pheasant I had met with on the upper part of the Missouri.
it is as large as a well grown fowl the iris of the eye is of a
dark yellowish brown, the puple black, the legs are booted to
the toes, the tail is composed of 18 black feathers tiped with
bluish white, of which the two in the center are reather shorter
than the others which are all of the same length. over the
eye there is a stripe of a 1/4 of an inch in width uncovered with
feathers of a fine orrange yellow. the wide spaces void of
feathers on the side of the neck are also of the same colour.
I had some parts of this bird preserved. our present station
is the last point at which there is a single stick of timber on
the river for a great distance and is the commencement of the
open plains which extend nearly to the base of the rocky Mt
s
Labuish returned this evening having killed two deer I sent
and had them brought in. this evening Capt. C. informed me
by some of the men whom he sent over that that he had
obtained no horses as yet of the natives. that they promised
to trade with him provided he would remove to their village.
to this he had consented and should proceede to the Skillute
village above the long narrows as soon as the men returned
whom he had sent to me for some other articles. I dispatched
the men on their return to Capt. C. immediately with these
articles and he set out with his party accompanyed by the
natives to their village where he remained all night. the
natives who had spent the day with me seemed very well disposed,
they left me at 6 in the evening and returned to their
rispective villages. the hunters informed me that they saw
some Antelopes, & the tracks of several black bear, but no
appearance of any Elk. we were informed by the Indians
that the river which falls in on the S. side of the Columbia
just above the Eneshur village heads in Mount hood and dose
not water the extensive country which we have heretofore calculated
on.
[24]
a great portion of that extensive tract of country
to the S. and S.W. of the Columbia and it's S.E. branch, and
between the same and the waters of Callifornia must be watered
by the Multnomah river.
Observed Equal Altitudes of the Sun with Sextant
|
h m s |
|
h m s |
|
| A.M. |
6. 52 . 43. |
P.M. |
2. 20 . 45 |
Chronometer too slow
m s
M.T. [blank space in MS.] |
|
" . 54 . 20. |
|
" . 22 . 26. |
|
|
" . 55 . 26. |
|
" . 24 .—. |
|
