1826, AUGUST. FORT VANCOUVER 211 



I proceeded over a point of land fifteen miles, taking an Indian 

 to assist me in carrying my things. The canoe did not appear till 

 an hour after dark. In the evening a large party of seventy-three 

 men came to smoke with me, and all seemed to behave decently till I 

 discovered that my tobacco-box was off. I had hung up my jacket and 

 vest to dry, being drenched in the canoe descending the Dalles. As soon 

 as I discovered this I perched myself on a rock, and in their own tongue 

 I gave then a furious reprimand, calling them all the low names used 

 to each other among themselves. I told them they saw me only one 

 blanket man but I was more than that, I was the grass man, and was 

 not afraid. I could not recover it. After all the quarrel, I slept here 

 unmolested. 



Monday, 28th. Detained by a strong west wind till eight o'clock, when 

 it became more moderate and I proceeded. Made but little progress. 

 Camped fifteen miles above the Grand Rapids. 



1 Tuesday, 29f^.-| As the wind increased with the day, I could not venture 

 out in the stream, and even near the shore the waves were so high that I had 

 to carry all my property on my back along the high shelving rocks, leaving 

 the Indians to bring down the canoe. Arrived at the village on the Grand 

 Rapids at three and repaired to the house of Chumtalia, the chief, and my 

 old guide last year, where I had some salmon and whortleberries laid before 

 me on a mat. I made a hearty meal and then spoke of procuring a large 

 canoe and Indians to take me to the sea. He offered to go himself, but as 

 he was busily employed curing salmon I was loth to accept his services, 

 and took in preference his brother and nephew, with a fine large canoe, and 

 proceeded down the lower end of the rapid in the evening. Camped on a 

 low bank of sand in the channel where there was no herbage, so of course 

 was not annoyed with insects. Long before daylight I was under way 

 lest I should be detained with wind, which for the last three days rose with 

 the sun. (Passed Point Vancouver at sunrise. I had the gratification of 

 landing safe at Fort Vancouver at midday, after traversing nearly eight 

 hundred miles of the Columbia Valley in twelve days and unattended by a 

 single person, my Indian guides excepted. l-j My old friends here gave every 

 attention a wayworn wanderer is entitled to. On their discovering me 

 plodding up the low plain from the river to the house alone, unpleasant 

 thoughts struck them. As the river was never seen higher than it has been 

 this year, and of course caution is requisite in descending, they appre- 

 hended I was the only survivor. I confess astonishment came over me to 

 meet a people from whom I had had more kindness a thousand times than I 

 could ever have expected, look so strange on me ; but as soon as I dispelled 

 the cloud of melancholy that sat on every brow I had that unaffected 

 welcome so characteristic among people so far from home. I had a shirt, 

 a pair of leather trousers, an old straw hat, neither shoe nor stocking nor 

 handkerchief of any description, and perhaps from my careworn visage had 

 some appearance of escaping from the gates of death. In the list of the 

 little society I have here is a Peter Skeene Ogden, Esq. (brother of 

 the Solicitor-General for the Canadas), a man of much information and 

 seemingly a very friendly-disposed person ; also Capt. Davidson, of the ship 



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