PUGET SOUND AND OKONAGAN. 433 



over the landscape. This grass is the natural hay before spoken of, 

 which seems to point out this for a grazing country, though there is a 

 large district destitute of water. 



On the 8th, at one o'clock, the party reached the banks of the Co- 

 lumbia, opposite to Okonagan, when a canoe was employed to take 

 them over. This post was in charge of a Canadian by the name of 

 Le Pratt ; but the whole is now going into rapid decay, as it is only 

 retained as an entrepot for the deposit of supplies, &c, in connexion 

 with the posts in New Caledonia, as the northern part of this country 

 is called by the Hudson Bay Company. Okonagan lies directly on the 

 route thither, and here they change from land to water transportation. 

 Were it not for the convenience it affords, in this respect, it would not 

 be retained. It is inhabited by two Canadian white men and numerous 

 half-breed women and children, the men having gone down the river 

 with Mr. Ogden. It has, as usual at the posts, an Indian encampment 

 on the outside, but there is no Indian settlement within eight miles, 

 where there is a salmon-fishery. Few skins are obtained here, and 

 the extreme scarcity of game and fur animals is remarkable throughout 

 all this part of Middle Oregon. This is somewhat difficult to account 

 for, as we are well satisfied that there is abundance of food, and that 

 all kinds of cattle would thrive exceedingly in this section, where grass 

 is so abundant. 



Okonagan and the old Spokane House, on the river of the same name, 

 (now abandoned,) were the first posts established in this country by 

 the American Company, some twenty-nine years prior to our visit. 

 Falling into the possession of the Northwest Company, they were, on 

 .he union of that Company with the Hudson Bay Company, passed 

 over to the latter. Okonagan is situated on a poor, flat, sandy neck, 

 about two miles above the junction of the river of that name with the 

 Columbia. It is a square, picketed in the same manner as those 

 already described, but destitute of bastions, and removed sixty yards 

 from the Columbia. Within the pickets there is a large house for the 

 reception of the Company's officers, consisting of several apartments, 

 and from each end of it two rows of low mud huts run towards the 

 entrance: these serve as offices and dwellings for the trappers and 

 their families. In the centre there is an open space. 



French is the language spoken here, as it is at all the other posts of 

 the Company. 



Half a mile above the mouth of the Okonagan, it was found to be 

 three hundred feet wide: it is a dull, turbid stream. The Columbia 

 at this place was found to be sixteen hundred feet wide. 



Besides the care of the barges for navigating the river, and the 

 vol. iv. 2M 55 



