stream they gave the name of Lepage
for Bastien Lepage, one of the voyageurs accompanying the party. The
watercourse, however, is now known as John Day's River. John Day was
a mighty hunter and backwoodsman from Kentucky who went across the
continent, six years later, with a party bound for Astoria, on the
Columbia. From the rapids below the John Day River the Lewis and Clark
party caught their first sight of Mount Hood, a famous peak of the
Cascade range of mountains, looming up in the southwest, eleven thousand
two hundred and twenty-five feet high. Next day they passed the mouth
of another river entering the Columbia from the south and called by
the Indians the Towahnahiooks, but known to modern geography as the Des
Chutes, one of the largest southern tributaries of the Columbia. Five
miles below the mouth of this stream the party camped. Near them was a
party of Indians engaged in drying and packing salmon. Their method of
doing this is thus described:--

"The manner of doing this is by first opening the fish and exposing it
to the sun on scaffolds. When it is sufficiently dried it is pounded
between two stones till it is pulverized, and is then placed in a
basket about two feet long and one in diameter, neatly made of grass and
rushes, and lined with the skin of a salmon stretched and dried for the
purpose. Here the fish are pressed down as hard as possible, and the top
is covered with fish-skins, which are secured by cords through the holes
of the basket. These baskets are then placed in some dry situation, the
corded part upward, seven being usually placed as close as they can be
put together, and five on the top of these. The whole is then wrapped
up in mats, and made fast by cords, over which mats are again thrown.
Twelve of these baskets, each of which contains from ninety to one
hundred pounds, form a stack, which is left exposed till it is sent to
market. The fish thus preserved keep sound and sweet for several years,
and great quantities, they inform us, are sent to the Indians who live
below the falls, whence it finds its way to the whites who visit the
mouth of the Columbia. We observe, both near the lodges and on the rocks
in the river, great numbers of stacks of these pounded fish. Besides
fish, these people supplied us with filberts and berries, and we
purchased a dog for supper; but it was with much difficulty that we were
able to buy wood enough to cook it."

On the twenty-third the voyagers made th