PUGET SOUND AND OKONAGAN. 455 



but were created for the purpose of inducing high prices to be 



given. 



The party now branched off at right angles to their former route, 

 Lieutenant Johnson heartily sick and tired of his friend Tidias and 

 his people. Two more of the Indians here left them. The country 

 they entered, after passing a ridge about six hundred feet high, was 

 quite of a different aspect, forming long sloping hills, covered with a 

 scanty growth of pines. Many dry beds of rivulets were passed, and 

 the soil of the hills produced nothing but a long thin grass. There 

 are, however, some small valleys where the growth of grass is luxu- 

 riant, the pines are larger, and the scenery assumed a park-like 

 appearance. 



From the summit of one of the hills, a sketch of Mount Rainier, 

 and of the intervening range, was obtained. 



MOUNT RAINIER. 



On the top of the ridge they fell in with a number of Spipen 

 Indians, who were engaged in digging the cammass and other roots. 

 The latter were those of an umbelliferous plant, oblong, tuberous, 

 and in taste resembling a parsnep. The process used to prepare 

 them for bread, is to bake them in a well-heated oven of stones ; 

 when they are taken out they are dried, and then pounded between 

 two stones till the mass becomes as fine as corn-meal, when it is 

 kneaded into cakes and dried in the sun. These roots are the prin- 

 cipal vegetable food of the Indians throughout middle Oregon. The 

 women are frequently seen, to the number of twenty or thirty, with 

 baskets suspended from the neck and a pointed stick in their hand, 

 digging these roots, and so intently engaged in the search for them, 

 as to pay no attention whatever to a passer-by. When these roots are 

 properly dried, they are stored away for the winter's consumption. 

 This day they made only fifteen miles, in a northern direction. 



On the 2d of June, they reached the Yakima, after having crossed 

 a small stream. The Yakima was too deep for the horses to ford 

 with their packs, and they now for the first time used their balsas 

 of India-rubber cloth, which were found to answer the purpose of 

 floating the loads across the stream. 



