Skelch of the Life of M-r. David Douglas, 269 



expected, yet regretting- that the wild disposition of the Shoshonccs, 

 and our slender acquaintance with them, prevented his penetrating 

 further to the southward within their bounds. To have attempted 

 that would have been attended with great risk and danger. At 

 this time we adopted a very successful mode of catching lizards ; 

 Indian boys were employed to beat about for the game armed with 

 single horse-hair lassos, tied to the end of a wand. It was laugh- 

 able to see the little urchins, naked as they were born, scouring 

 about, and when they discovered a hole, throwing themselves flat 

 on the heated sand, and extending the small noose over the entry 

 to the reptile's apartment. Where their victim shewed his head, 

 they would then quickly suspend him with one jerk, and bring 

 him like a culprit to our sides : a slight reward would put them 

 in ecstasies, and they would again scamper ofi'for renewed captures." 

 The most common species obtained was an Agama, the Tajjciya 

 Douglasii, and a very beautiful long tailed little lizard of a light 

 pavonine iridescent hue. It measured about six inches or more, 

 was particularly agile and appeared to great advantage, as it flitted 

 rapidly before the sun from knoll to knoll. It was probably a 

 Cnemidophorus. The habitations of all creatures of this class can 

 be quickly found in the sand of that arid region, collected often 

 in heaps around the interlacing roots of Pursliia tridentata and 

 a few Artemisias, and stinted grasses growing there. 



On the 23rd July Mr. Douglas left Wallawalla and I felt his 

 absence as a sad blank, only to be recompensed by a future meeting, 

 a hope which however was never to be realized in this life. His 

 thoughts were turned towards California, and he availed himself 

 of the occasion of a return boat to Fort Vancouver to return to 

 the coast. It was this year, in the beginning of August, that 

 fever and ague first shewed itself on the Lower Columbia. Its 

 ravages among the natives were fearful. Ignorant of the complaint, 

 and accustomed to daily bathing, when the hot stage arrived, they 

 would plunge themselves into the cold waters of the river and drag 

 themselves out again merely to breathe their last upon the sand. 

 The beeches in front of the crowded villages were strewed with 

 dead. The aged and the young and mothers with their babes 

 remained in the huts to perish ; only the more robust flying to the 

 mountains arrested the progress of the malady, and prevented it 

 from entirely extirpating the river tribes ; small pox could not 

 have made a more destructive sweep. It remains a question for 

 physicians to solve, how this intermittent, until then quiescent in 



