[Lewis:]
Saturday February 8th. 1806.
Sent Sergt. Ordway and two men this morning to join the
party with Sergt. Gass and bring the ballance of R. Field's Elk.
in the evening they returned with the ballance of the flesh of
five Elk, that of one of them having become tainted and unfit
for uce. late in the evening Serg
t. Pryor returned with Shannon
Labuish and his party down the Netul. they brought with
them the flesh of 4 Elk which those two hunters had killed.
we have both dined and suped on Elk's tongues and marrow
bones.
I have discovered that the shrub and fruit discribed on the
26th of January is not that which the Indians call the Shal-lon,
but that is such as is there discribed, and the berry is estemed
and used by the natives as there mentioned except that [it] is
not like the shallon, baked in large loaves, but is simply dryed
in the sun for winter uce, when they either eat them in thir
dryed state or boil them in water. The Shallon is the production
of a shrub which I have heretofore taken to be a speceis
of loral and mentioned as abounding in this neighbourhood and
that the Elk fed much on it's leaves.[28]
it generally rises to the
hight of 3 feet but not unusually attains to that of 5 feet. it
grows very thick and is from the size of a goos quill to that of
a man's thumb, celindric, the bark of the older or larger part
of the stock is of a redish brown colour while that of the
younger branches and succulent shoots are red where most
exposed to the sun and green elsewhere. the stem is simple
branching reclining, and partially fluxouse [flexuous], or at
least the smaler stocks or such parts of them and the boughs
as produce the leaves, take a different direction at the insertion
of every petiole. the leaf is oval four & 3/4 inches in length
and 2 1/2 in width. petiolate, the petiole short only 3/8th. of an
inch in length, celindric with a slight channel on it's upper side
where it is generally red; undivided or entire, slightly serrate,
the apex termineating in an accute point; the upper disk of a
glossey deep green, the under disk of a pale green; veined.
the leaves are also alternate and two ranked. the root is horizontal
puting forth perpendicular radicles. this shrub is an
evergreen. the fruit is a deep perple berry about the size of a
buck short or common black cherry, of an ovate form tho
reather more bluntly pointed, than at the insertion of the
peduncle; at this extremity, the thin coloured membranous
pellicle, which forms the surface of the pericarp, is divided into
five accute angular points, which meet in the center, and contains
a soft pulp of the same colour invelloping a great number
of small brown kidney formed seeds. each berry is supported
by a seperate celindric peduncle of half an inch in length;
these to the number of ten or twelve issue from a common
peduncle or footstalk which is fuxouse [flexuous] and forms
the termination of the twig of the present years growth; each
peduncle supporting a berry is furnished with one oblong
bracte placed at it's insertion on the common foot-[stalk] which
when the fruit is ripe withers with the peduncle.
