68 EARLY DAY STORIES. 



at the mouth of the White Salmon river, and here we land- 

 ed and remained three days waiting for the storm to sub- 

 side, and of course we ate up all our store of provisions 

 before we got under way again. We were just about out 

 of everything to trade on, and the Indians, finding it out, 

 were good to us. We had no blankets left at all as I re- 

 member, but there was lots of timber, some of it very large, 

 which sheltered us from the wind and we took lodgings 

 under a big fir tree that shed a good deal of rain, made and 

 kept up a big fire, and got along pretty well. The Indians 

 had some very coarse shorts, and we traded something, I 

 do not remember what, for some of it, intending to make 

 a cake and bake it in our frying pan, but it would not make 

 dough that would hold together, but fell apart like bran, so 

 we boiled it in the tin pail and called it mush — however, 

 it was about half way between mush and soup. Then Wes- 

 ley took the one remaining pearl button, and started out to 

 trade. He found a squaw who had just caught a large 

 white salmon, weighing probably thirty pounds, and struck 

 a bargain for it. The squaw, however, insisted on dressing 

 and cooking the salmon, and bless her that she did — it was 

 the best job of the kind I ever saw. She split the salmon 

 on the back, then run two or three long, slim sticks through 

 it lengthwise, then two or three crosswise to keep it spread 

 out wide and flat, stuck the long ends of the sticks in the 

 ground, before the fire and roasted it, then when it was 

 cooked, placing it on a broad, clean piece of bark, withdraw- 

 ing the sticks, she placed it before us. 



At the risk of making this too long, one or two more 

 things must be told. The storm over, we were taken on 

 down the river, landing at the upper end of the Cascades 

 or lower falls of the Columbia, and then walking five miles 

 down over the rocks on the north side of the river to the 

 foot of the falls, where was the little village called the Cas- 

 <^-ades. Here, which was the head of tide water, and at that 



