themselves rewarded for
all their labours and all their difficulties. They left reluctantly
this interesting spot, and pursuing the Indian road through the interval
of the hills, arrived at the top of a ridge, from which they saw high
mountains partially covered with snow still to the west of them. The
ridge on which they stood formed the dividing line between the waters of
the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They followed a descent much steeper
than that on the eastern side, and at the distance of three quarters of
a mile reached a handsome bold creek of cold clear water running to the
westward. They stopped to taste for the first time the waters of the
Columbia; and after a few minutes followed the road across steep hills
and low hollows, till they reached a spring on the side of a mountain:
here they found a sufficient quantity of dry willow brush for fuel, and
therefore halted for the night; and having killed nothing in the course
of the day supped on their last piece of pork, and trusted to fortune
for some other food to mix with a little flour and parched meal, which
was all that now remained of their provisions. Before reaching the
fountain of the Missouri they saw several large hawks nearly black, and
some of the heath cocks: these last have a long pointed tail, and are of
a uniform dark brown colour, much larger than the common dunghill fowl,
and similar in habits and the mode of flying to the grouse or prairie
hen. Drewyer also wounded at the distance of one hundred and thirty
yards an animal which we had not yet seen, but which after falling
recovered itself and escaped. It seemed to be of the fox kind, rather
larger than the small wolf of the plains, and with a skin in which
black, reddish brown, and yellow, were curiously intermixed. On the
creek of the Columbia they found a species of currant which does not
grow as high as that of the Missouri, though it is more branching, and
its leaf, the under disk of which is covered with a hairy pubescence, is
twice as large. The fruit is of the ordinary size and shape of the
currant, and supported in the usual manner, but is of a deep purple
colour, acid, and of a very inferior flavour.

We proceeded on in the boats, but as the river was very shallow and
rapid, the navigation is extremely difficult, and the men who are almost
constantly in the water are getting feeble and sore, and so much wore
down by fatigue that they are very anxious to commence travelling by
land.