is not unlike liquorice, but not of so sickly a
sweetness. When we made our first voyage up the river the natives gave
us square biscuits, very well worked, and printed with different
figures. These are made of a white root, pounded, reduced to paste, and
dried in the sun. They call it _Chapaleel_: it is not very palatable;
nor very nutritive.

But the principal food of the natives of the Columbia is fish. The
salmon-fishery begins in July: that fish is here of an exquisite flavor,
but it is extremely fat and oily; which renders it unwholesome for those
who are not accustomed to it, and who eat too great a quantity: thus
several of our people were attacked with diarrhoea in a few days after
we began to make this fish our ordinary sustenance; but they found a
remedy in the raspberries of the country which have an astringent
property.

The months of August and September furnish excellent sturgeon. This fish
varies exceedingly in size; I have seen some eleven feet long; and we
took one that weighed, after the removal of the eggs and intestines,
three hundred and ninety pounds. We took out nine gallons of roe. The
sturgeon does not enter the river in so great quantities as the salmon.

In October and November we had salmon too, but of a quite different
species--lean, dry and insipid. It differs from the other sort in form
also; having very long teeth, and a hooked nose like the beak of a
parrot. Our men termed it in derision "seven bark salmon," because it
had almost no nutritive substance.

February brings a small fish about the size of a sardine. It has an
exquisite flavor, and is taken in immense quantities, by means of a
scoop net, which the Indians, seated in canoes, plunge into the schools:
but the season is short, not even lasting two weeks.

The principal quadrupeds of the country are the elk, the black and white
tailed deer; four species of bear, distinguished chiefly by the color of
the fur or _poil_, to wit, the black, brown, white and grisly bear; the
grisly bear is extremely ferocious; the white is found on the seashore
toward the north; the wolf, the panther, the catamount, the lynx, the
raccoon, the ground hog, opossum, mink, fisher, beaver, and the land and
sea otter.[W] The sea otter has the handsomest fur that is known; the
skin surpasses that of the land variety in size and in the beauty of the
_poil_; the most esteemed color is the silver gray, which is highly
prized in the Indies, and commands a g