Rocky Mountains. 165 



sind from the necessity of our situation, thought ourselves 

 justified in seizing, and converting it to our own use. Our 

 pack-horses had become much weakened, and reduced by 

 long fatigue, and in crossing the river, as we had often to do, 

 we felt that our collections, the only valuable part of our 

 ^^8S^ge» were constantly exposed to the risk of being wetted. 

 We accordingly made prize of the canoe, and putting on 

 board our packs and heavy baggage, manned it with two 

 men, designing that they should navigate it down to the set- 

 tlements. Not far from this canoe, we discovered in the ad- 

 joining woods, the remains of an old camp, which we per- 

 ceived had been occupied by white men, and saw other con- 

 vincing proofs, that we were coming near some inhabited 

 country. 



We halted at evening in a small prairie, on the north side 

 of the river, the first we had seen for some time. The diffi- 

 culties of navigation, arising from the shallowness of the wa- 

 ter, prevented the arrival of the canoe and baggage, until a 



ohes, measured one hundred and forty-one feet and six inches in height, 

 and five feet in diameter,* which is exceeded by few trees, except the sy- 

 camore, in the temperate parts of North America. [Freeman^ MS, 

 Journal.] Though we have not actual admeasurements to compare with 

 this, we are of opinion, that many trees on the Arkansa, would rather ex- 

 ceed, than fall short of these dimensions. The cotton-wood affords a light 

 and soft thnber, not very durable, except when protected from the wea- 

 ther. Before expansion, the buds of this tree are partially covered with a 

 Tiscid resinous exudation, resembling that so conspicuous on the buds of 

 the P. balsaniifera, and diffusing in spring and the early part of summer, 

 an extremely grateful balsamic odour. 



* According to Pennant, the gran or JVorwayfir, (Pinus abies, P.) the 

 loftiest of European trees attains only the height of one hundred and sixty 

 feet, [bee Introd. to his Arctic Zoology, p. 103.] The pines of Nootka 

 Sound are one hundred and twenty feet high. [Barriugton's Misc. 290.] 

 Gov. Phillip relates, that the pines of Norfolk island, are sometimes one 

 hundred and eighty feet high, and nine or ten in diameter at the bottom 

 of the trunk, but these are considered trees of astonishing magnitude. Can 

 it be credited, that a species of pine on the Columbia, is commonly twen- 

 ty-seven feet in circumference, six feet above the earth's surface, and 

 two hundred and thirty feet high, rising one hundred and twenty feet 

 without a limb.' We have it on the unquestioned authority of Lewis 

 and Clark, p. 156, V. 2, that they found one tree, whose trunk rose two 

 hundred feet without limbs, and whose entire height was three hundred 

 feet. This tree appears, from their description, to hare been an Abies, 



