. As we
tasted them, they explained that they were not ready to eat; that it
would take two or three days to roast them sufficiently. This they live
upon for two or three months; with the salmon, it is their chief article
of food. The women stop at the kamas-grounds, while the men go to the
fishing-stations.

In August they gather the choke-berry and service-berry, to dry for the
winter. When they are reduced to great extremity for food, they
sometimes boil and eat the moss and lichens on the trees, which the deer
eats. Most of the work of digging the roots, and picking the berries,
falls upon the women. On this account, a Spokane man in marrying joins
the tribe of his wife, instead of her joining his tribe; thinking, if he
takes her away from the places where she has been accustomed to find her
roots and berries, she may not succeed, in a new place, in discovering
them.

We saw, in the vicinity of the Pelouse River, some remarkable basaltic
rocks, that looked like buildings with columns and turrets and
bastions. Some of them were like my idea of the great kings' tombs of
the Egyptians. The colors on them were often very Egyptian-like,--bright
sulphur-yellow, and brown, and sometimes orange and dark
red,--incrustations of lichen and weather-staining. We saw, also, walls
of pentagonal columns of rock, packed closely together. Where the
Pelouse enters the Snake River, are immense ledges of square blocks.
When we camped there, and I lay down beneath them at night, "Swedish
_trappa_, a stair," from the geological text-book, was always running in
my mind,--this black trap-rock made such great steps that led up towards
the sky.

We have seen here a splendid specimen of gold, which is to be sent to
the Exposition at Paris. It is granulated, and sparkles as I never saw
gold before. Some one suggests that a thin film of quartz may be
crystallized over it.

Next week we hope to go up within sight of the whirlpools of Death's
Rapids, a long distance above here, on the Columbia River. These rapids
are so named on account of the number of persons who have been lost in
attempting to navigate them. Their names are cut into the rocks at the
side of the passage; their bodies have never been found.

IV.

Two Hundred Miles on the Upper Columbia.--Steamer
"Forty-Nine."--Navigation in a Canyon.--Pend d'Oreille River and
Lake.--Rock Paintings.--Tributaries of the Upper Columbia.--Arrow
Lakes.--Kettle