NARRATIVE OF 1853. 161 
DOCTOR SUCKLEY’S TRIP. 
Dr. Suckley had a very successful canoe trip, although greatly disappointed in not having 
been able to procure the means at the lower Pend d’ Oreille Mission to make the distance from 
that point to Colville by water. І had not intended at Colville to do otherwise than advise 
Dr. Suckley of the difficulties of the water route between these two points, and to suggest 
simply, looking to his own safety, the coming over by land; but the good fathers of the Mission, 
in their care for his safety and their personal regard for him, refused to let him have canoes or 
an Indian guide. е 
Dr. Suckley, in preparing for his voyage down the Bitter Root, found considerable difficulty 
in constructing a canoe suitable for the purpose, as the Indians and white inhabitants were 
totally unacquainted with any means of navigating the river, neither boat nor canoe having 
ever ascended higher than the Horse Plain, at the junction of the Bitter Root with Clark’s 
Fork, or Flathead river. There seems to be no inducement for them to navigate it, as their 
hunting grounds lie in another direction, and they are too indolent to explore a new route, if 
not absolutely necessary. At last a skin canoe was made of three bullocks’ hides stretched 
over a frame, and on October 15 he embarked with two white men and an Indian as crew. No 
one knew anything as to the character of the river ahead of them, and it was necessary, 
therefore, to proceed with caution. It was found quite shallow in many places, and the canoe 
which, when loaded, drew only ten inches of water, had frequently to be lightened until he 
passed the Hell-Gate. About sixty miles below the mouth of the Hell-Gate, the mountains, 
crowding close upon it, make it very rapid, but further down it is more straight, deeper, and 
sluggish, with large flats on one or both sides of it. 
From the Horse Plain down Clark’s Fork to St. Ignatius’s Mission, where he arrived Novem- 
ber 8, he had to make two portages. The Hudson Bay Company were formerly in the habit 
of carrying up their goods in large boats to Horse Plain from the foot of Pend d’ Oreille lake, 
making two portages on the way. Below the lake there is no obstruction for about thirty 
miles, when a fall of six and a half feet is met with, the river being divided by rocky islands. 
From this fall to a point nine miles above the lake he thinks that steamboats drawing from 
twenty to twenty-four inches could easily ascend, and in high water the distance might be 
increased from sixty to a hundred miles, or from a point ten miles below the Mission to the 
Cabinet, fifteen miles above the lake. A lock might readily be constructed at the falls so as to 
admit of navigation at all seasons. At the Cabinet the river is compressed кенен walls of 
solid rock, about a hundred feet in height, and becomes very narrow and rapid, as at the 
Dalles, so that the possibility of passing through with steamboats is uncertain. 
The portage made by Dr. Suckley was of 1,300 paces. 4 
From the uncertainty of the route before him Dr. Suckley was thus twenty-five days in reach- 
ing the Pend 4 Oreille Mission of St. Ignatius. His provisions had become scanty, and after 
having devoured the last crumbs, made into a gruel with berries, they were glad to meet with 
а camp of Indians, not far above the Mission, who supplied them with food and treated them 
with great hospitality. The pious ceremonies of all these Indians, and their Опар deport- 
ment under the instructions of the missionary, Father Hoecken, were very interesting after 
their long and fatiguing journey, suffering from intense cold and half starved as they were. 
The missionaries themselves, Fathers Hoecken and Menatrie, with the lay brothers, Mageau 
215 
