"The Chopunnish or Pierced-nose nation, who reside on the Kooskooskee and Lewis' Rivers, are in person stout, portly, well-looking men; the women are small, with good features, and generally handsome, though the complexion of both sexes is darker than that of the Tushepaws. In dress they resemble that nation, being fond of displaying their ornaments. The buffalo or elk-skin robe decorated with beads, sea-shells, chiefly mother-of-pearl, attached to an otter-skin collar and hung in the hair, which falls in front in two queues; feathers, paints of different kinds, principally white, green, and light blue, all of which they find in their own country; these are the chief ornaments they use. In the winter they wear a short shirt of dressed skins, long painted leggings and moccasins, and a plait of twisted grass round the neck.

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The dress of the women is more simple, consisting of a long shirt of argalia or ibex skin, reaching down to the ankles without a girdle; to this are tied little pieces of brass and shells and other small articles; but the head is not at all ornamented. The dress of the female is indeed more modest, and more studiously so than any we have observed, though the other sex is careless of the indelicacy of exposure.

"The Chopunnish have very few amusements, for their life is painful and laborious; and all their exertions are necessary to earn even their precarious subsistence. During the summer and autumn they are busily occupied in fishing for salmon, and collecting their winter store of roots. In the winter they hunt the deer on snow-shoes over the plains, and towards

Spring cross the mountains to the Missouri for the purpose of trafficking for buffalo robes.”

In camp in the vicinity of the Chopunnish lodges, the Expedition made ready their canoes for the descent of the Kooskooskee, and prepared one or two dug-outs in which to transport the heavier stores of the party over the rough water they expected to find as they proceeded seaward. Here also they left what remained uneaten of their Indian ponies in charge of a chief, against the wants of the return. journey, and cached, or concealed in underbrush, their saddlery and other impedimenta they were not likely to require on the river. When all was ready, the Expedition committed itself, on October 8th, to the further unknown route to the sea, by the Clearwater and the Snake Rivers, toward the Columbia, which great waterway the explorers safely reached and entered on October 16th. Here, from the Sokulk Indians, whom they met with at the entrance into the Columbia, the party chefs purchased two-score more dogs for edible purposes, together with some prairie cocks, and about twenty pounds of dried horseflesh.

CHAPTER IX

AFLOAT ON THE COLUMBIA TO TIDEWATER AND THE

OCEAN

THE Expedition now set out on the final stage of its long journey on the waters of the Columbia or Oregon River. This great river, as all know, has its sources in what is now the Canadian Province of British Columbia, whence it courses southwestward through the present State of Washington, and, when it passes the confluence of the Snake or Lewis River, flows westward, with a northern trend, between the States of Oregon and Washington to the Pacific. Its navigation, the explorers were to find, was much obstructed by cascades and rapids, though many parts of it they also found sublime in its scenery. As yet, practically nothing of the noble river was known: only in 1792 had it been discovered, when in that year Captain Gray of Boston, in his ship the Columbia, entered and named the mighty stream while in that section of the Pacific coast in search for furs. This chance act in the mouth of the river, with the subsequent descent of its waters by the Lewis and Clark Expedition, established the United States claim to the region, and to what was called the Oregon country. This, however, was not settled until the year 1846, when in a dispute with Great Britain,

at the time of the War with Mexico, the United States were ceded by treaty all the country south of latitude 49°. Here, in 1810, it will be recalled, John Jacob Astor founded, fifteen miles from the mouth of the Columbia, his great fur-trade emporium, Astoria, the headquarters of the salmon fishery and peltry trade of the Northwest.

The explorers, meanwhile, as we have stated, had entered the Columbia proper (October 17, 1805), and in the vicinity they gained from an Indian chief (of the Yellippit tribe) some knowledge of the course and characteristics of the river. On the way down, the party came upon Indians who fled in alarm from the whites, but whose confidence was gained by kindly acts and the distribution of trinkets and other presents to their squaws. Soon now, from a high bluff near the banks of the stream, Captain Clark sighted a lofty mountain, with snow-covered tops, which was afterward ascertained to be Mount St. Helena, in the present State of Washington, and already noted from the Pacific by Vancouver, the British navigator who had served under Captain Cook, and who, about five years before the close of the previous century, had explored the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the Gulf of Georgia, and the shores of Vancouver Island. On their descent of the Columbia, the Expedition had made its camp on an island in the river, of which, and the events connected with it, we have an interesting account in the "Journal.” Here is the narrative:

"Four miles beyond this island we came to a rapid, from the appearance of which it was judged

prudent to examine it. After landing for that purpose on the left side, we began to enter the channel which is close under the opposite shore. It is a very dangerous rapid, strewed with high rocks and rocky islands, and in many places obstructed by shoals, over which the canoes were to be hauled, so that we were more than two hours in passing through the rapids, which extend for the same number of miles. The rapid has several small islands, and banks of musselshells are spread along the river in several places. In order to lighten the boats, Captain Clark, with the two chiefs, the interpreter, and his wife, had walked across the low grounds on the left to the foot of the rapids. On the way, Captain Clark ascended a cliff about two hundred feet above the water, from which he saw that the country on both sides of the river immediately from its cliffs was low, and spreads itself into a level plain, extending for a great distance on all sides. To the west, at the distance of about one hundred and fifty miles, is a very high mountain covered with snow, and from its direction and appearance, he supposed to be the Mount St. Helen's, laid down by Vancouver, as visible from the mouth of the Columbia: there is also another mountain of a conical form, whose top is covered with snow, in a southwest direction. As Captain Clark arrived at the lower end of the rapid before any, except one of the small canoes, he sat down on a rock to wait for them, and, seeing a crane fly across the river, shot it, and it fell near him. Several Indians had been before this passing on the opposite side towards the rapids, and some few who had been