FIRST ATTEMPTED ASCENT, 1857 



completely demoralized and nearly starving. A family 

 of two or three men, and quite a number of women and 

 children, had camped in the fork of the Mishawl and 

 Nesqually, about two miles from this prairie, and were 

 making fishtraps to catch salmon. When we fell in 

 with them we learned that the Washington Territory 

 volunteers had been before us, and with their im- 

 mensely superior force had killed the most of them 

 without regard to age or sex. Our own little com- 

 mand in that expedition captured about thirty of these 

 poor, half-starved, ignorant creatures, and no act of 

 barbarity was perpetrated by us to mar the memory 

 of that success. 



We accordingly camped in the Mishawl Prairie. 

 When I was here before it was in March, and the rainy 

 season was still prevailing ; the topographical engineer 

 of the expedition and I slept under the same blankets 

 on a wet drizzly night, and next morning treated each 

 other to bitter reproaches for having each had more 

 than his share of the covering. Now the weather was 

 clear and beautiful, and the scene lovely in comparison. 

 I can imagine nothing more gloomy and cheerless than 

 a fir-forest in Washington Territory on a rainy winter 

 day. The misty clouds hang down below the tops of 

 the tallest trees, and although it does not rain, but 

 drizzles, yet it is very wet and cold, and penetrates 

 every thread of clothing to the skin. The summers of 

 this region are in extraordinary contrast with the 

 winters. Clear, beautiful, and dry, they begin in May 

 and last till November ; while in the winter, although 

 in latitude 47 and 48, it rarely freezes or snows 

 often, however, raining two weeks without stopping 

 a permeating drizzle. 



On this Qth of July, 1857, the weather was beauti- 

 ful ; it had not rained for weeks. The Mishawl 

 a raging mountain torrent, when last I saw it was 

 now a sluggish rivulet of clear mountain-spring water. 

 We started early on our journey, having made our 



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