£78 
they received tobacco, rum and liquor, and occasionally 
a gift of clothing to some man who had brought in an 
especially good lot of beaver. On November 4 the traders 
had in store 720 beaver, 33 grizzly bears, 20 buffalo robes, 
300 muskrats, 100 lynx— not a bad trade for the season 
of the "year. 
November 9: "I rode up river about three miles to the 
rising ground on the north side, where Mr. Pangman 
carved his name on the pine in 1790. This spot was then 
the utmost distance of discoveries on the Saskatchewan 
toward the Rocky Mountains, of which, indeed, we had a 
tolerable view from this hill. The winding course of the 
river is seen until it enters the gap of the mountains, a 
little east of which appears another gap, through which, 
I am told, flows a south branch that empties into the 
Saskatchewan some miles above this place. The moun- 
tains appear at no great distance, all covered with snow ; 
while we have none." The arrival this day of an express 
from below brought the news that an act of Parliament 
had been passed prohibiting spirituous liquors among the 
Indians. 
The weather was now cold, the river occasionally chok- 
ing up with ice, and snow fell. The canoes were split by 
the frost, and axes broke while the men were chopping 
with them. Men were sent out to get dogs for hauling, 
and as soon as the country became covered with snow, 
dog trains were sent down to lower Terre Blanche to 
bring up goods. Gros Ventres of the Prairie had just re- 
turned with sixty horses, stolen from the Flatheads, and 
others had gone off to try to take more. On the 27th of 
December, "Our hunter had killed a large grizzly bear, 
very lean, and, as usual with them in that state, very 
wicked; he narrowly escaped being devoured. They sel- 
dom den for the winter, as black bears do, but wander 
about in search of prey." 
In February Henry made a trip to the Continental 
Divide, to where the waters of a branch of the Columbia 
rise within a very short distance of the Saskatchewan. 
He was obliged to tell the Piegans that he was going 
down the stream instead of up. Travel was by dog sledge, 
and over the frozen river, in which there were no air 
holes to be seen. On the way up, during the first day 
they found a carcass of a deer that had been killed by 
wolves. The ice was of great thickness, so that at night, 
when a man was endeavoring to get water from the 
stream, he was obliged to cut with an ax for an hour be- 
fore it flowed. As they went up the stream, the banks 
grew higher and near together, and at one point there was 
seen tracks of animals coming down the mountains 
among the rocks. "These are the gray sheep which have 
been seen about this place, and which delight to dwell 
among precipices and caverns, where they feed on a 
peculiar sort of clay." Dr. Coues places after this state- 
ment a question mark in brackets, but the reference is 
evidently to a ^lick," a place where a mineral spring has 
given a saline taste to the earth round about. Such licks 
are common enough in the Rocky Mountains and many 
other places, and are regularly visited by sheep, which 
often gnaw away the earth in many places and over a 
considerable space. A little further up the stream they 
were in full view of the mountains. The river being low, 
flowed through numerous channels, some of which were 
free from ice; others, which were frozen, had water flow- 
ing over the ice. Oar account of the wind there was little 
snow on the gravel bars, and the hauling was hard for 
the dogs and bad for the sleds. 
On the Sth, he overtook his people, who had started 
several days earlier, and who had killed three sheep and 
three cows. Here Henry stopped for a day, and sent off 
three men to hunt sheep, wishing to obtain the entire skin 
of an old ram. This they failed to secure, but one of 
them had seen the track of a white goat. The next day, 
keeping on, sheep tracks were seen, and Henry indulges 
in reflections on the wonderful places which they passed 
over, and their sureness of foot. The following day, 
"Shortly after leaving camp, we saw a herd of about 
thirty rams feeding among the rocks on the north side. 
They did not seem to be shy, though. the noise of our 
bells and dogs was sufficient to have alarmed a herd of 
buffalo two miles off. The rams stood for some time 
gazing at us, and did not retreat until some people with 
dogs climbed up to fire at them, when they set off at full 
speed, directing their course up the mountain. -I was 
astonished to> see with what agility they scaled the cliffs 
and crags. At one time I supposed them hemmed in by 
rocks so steep and smooth that it seemed impossible for 
any animal to escape being dashed to pieces below, but 
the whole herd passed this place on a narrow horizontal 
ledge, without a single misstep, and were soon out of 
sight." Here Henry seems to have seen his first flock of 
dippers, which interested him not a little ; and on the ice 
above this point he found, the remains of another ram 
which had been run down by wolves and devoured. 
There were plenty of buffalo on Kutenai Plains, which 
they now reached, but they killed none, a hunter firing at 
a sheep having driven them off. Moose and elk were 
plenty here, as well as white-tailed deer and grizzly 
bears ; and here, too, were seen "White partridges" — in 
other words, white-tailed ptarmigan. Still following up 
the river, the snow grew deeper and deeper, so that at 
length they were obliged to take to snowshoes, and to 
beat a path for their dogs. On the 9th of February they 
reached the Continental Divide, and passing . through 
thick forest, came to a small opening where three streams 
of Columbian waters join. The brook thus formed is 
Blueberry Creek, which runs into the Columbia. That 
morning, when leaving camp, in the Kutenai Park, a place 
where the Kutenais used to drive buffalo over the cliff, 
Henry had left his hunter, Desjarlaix, behind, telling him 
to try to kill a white goat. Shortly after his return to 
the camp, his hunter came in and told Henry that he had 
seen large white goats on the mountain, directly off 
Kutenai Park, where he had been trying since daybreak 
to get a shot at them. "He was almost exhausted, the 
snow being up to his middle, and the ground so steep as 
not to admit of snowshoes. He had worked about a 
quarter of the way up the mountain, but had been obliged 
to abandon the attempt to reach the animals. They did 
not appear the least shy, but stood gazing at him, and 
cropping the stunted shrubs and blades of long grass 
which grew in crevices in places where the wind had 
blown the snow off. As I desired to obtain the skin of 
one of those animals, I gave him dry mittens and trousers 
FOREST_AND„STREAM.« 
to put on, went with him to the foot of the mountain, and 
I pointed out a place where I supposed it was possible to 
reach them. We could perceive all three, still standing 
abreast on the edge of a precipice, looking down upon us, 
but they were at a great height. He once more under- 
took the arduous task of climbing up in pursuit of them, 
while I returned to the camp. A hunter in these moun- 
tains requires many pairs of shoes (i. e., moccasins), 
the rocks are so rough and sharp that a pair of good 
strong moose-leather shoes are soon torn to pieces. The 
white goat is [not] larger than the gray sheep, thickly 
covered with long, pure white wool, and has short black, 
nearly erect horns. These animals seldom leave the 
mountain tops ; winter or summer they prefer the highest 
regions. Late in the evening my hunter returned, ex- 
hausted, and covered with ice, having labored in the snow 
till his clothes became all wet, and soon after stiff with 
ice. He had ascended half way when the sun set, which 
obliged him to return." 
The next day Henry wished to send his hunter out 
again, but the poor fellow was so done up and his legs so 
swollen by the exercise of the day before, that the effort 
was given up. They therefore started down the river, 
past the camp of the day before, where they found that 
the men had killed sheep, buffalo, a large black wolf, and 
a Canada lynx. The following day they saw a herd of 
rams on the rocks, and tried to get a shot, "but one of 
our men, being some distance ahead, and not observing 
them, continued to drive on, which alarmed and drove 
them up into the mountains. I regretted this very much, 
as the herd consisted of old rams with enormous horns; 
one of them appeared to be very lean, with extraor- 
dinarily heavy horns, whose weight he seemed scarcely 
able to support. When the horns grow to such great 
length, forming a complete curve, the ends project on 
both sides of the head, so as to prevent the animal from 
feeding, which, with their great weight, causes the sheep 
to dwindle to a mere skeleton and die. We soon after- 
ward saw a herd of buffalo on the hills near the river, but 
on hearing the sound of the bells they ran away, and ap- 
peared much more shy than sheep." Continuing down 
the river, they reached the fort, February 13. 
Henry finished the winter at Rocky Mountain House, 
and in May, 181 1, started down the river to Fort 
Augustus. 
There is now a long break, extending over two years, 
in Henry's journal, the third part, as Dr. Coues has 
divided it, being devoted to the Columbia. November 15, 
1813, finds him at Astoria, the scene of so many trials of 
fur traders, and the place about which so many books 
have been written. The journal for the two intervening 
years has not been discovered. It may yet turn up, and 
if it shall, will undoubtedly give us much interesting in- 
formation. What we do know is that he came to Astoria 
from Fort William, but how he got there we do not 
know. They came, however, in bark canoes, for a con- 
temporary writer says so much as that. Not only was 
Henry here on the west coast, but his nephew, William 
Henry, who had been frequently associated with him in 
past years, even back on the Pembina River. The charac- 
ter of the Indians here interested Henry, and he makes 
his usual frank and not always elegant comments on 
them. On November 30 the British ship Raccoon reached 
Astoria, captured the place, and thereafter it was a 
British trading post, under the name Fort George. 
Duncan McDougal, the chief factor, had left the North- 
west Company to enter Mr. Astor's service, in 1810, but 
without any particular hesitation he surrendered to the 
British ship, although the Indians were only too anxious 
to defend the place for the Americans, and to assist the 
white men in holding it. As a matter of fact, however, 
most of the employes of Mr. Astor were British subjects, 
and were only too glad to have the place taken. 
There was a good deal of uncertainty as to whether the 
ship was British or American, and considerable alarm felt 
by the British sympathizers at the post. The story is 
well known. The Raccoon stayed at Fort George for 
about a month, and then sailed away. 
Much time was expended on the final settlement of the 
accounts between McDougal, who had been Mr. Astor's 
representative at Astoria, and the representatives of the 
Northwest Company, who were now in possession; but 
at last this was all finished, and on December 31 the Rac- 
coon made sail, and disappeared behind Point Adams. 
Rains were constant, and they and their property suf- 
fered much front wet and dampness. With this spring, 
Henry for the first time seems to have seen the Indians 
catching smelts and herrings, and describes the well- 
known rake used on the western coast : "They had a pole 
about ten feet long and two inches thick, on one side of 
which was fixed a range of small sharp bones, like teeth, 
about one inch long, a quarter of an inch asunder, the 
range of teeth ascending six feet up the blade. This 
instrument is used in the smelt fishery." As is well 
known, the Indians sweep this instrument through the 
water in places where the small fish are schooled, and 
at each sweep of the rake, from one to a half dozen fish 
are empaled, when the implement being brought to the 
surface and held over the canoe, the fish are jarred from 
it into the vessel. On the 28th of February a ship, the 
Pedler, brought Mr. Hunt, who was second to Mr. Astor 
in the management of the P. F. Company, and headed the 
original overland Astor expedition in 1810-12. 
There was now a gathering of all the partners and 
those interested in the Northwest Company and the P. 
F. Company, for a settling of accounts between Hunt and 
McDougal. The Pedler got under way April 2. On April 
4 a brigade of ten canoes set off up the river. This left 
a small contingent at Fort George, and this contingent 
very ill provided. They had a little spoiled California 
beef, and a little bad grease. Besides this, all they had 
were the smelts which the Indians were catching, which 
were largely spoiled, and which the men would not eat, 
and the little provision that they could buy from the In- 
dians, a few beaver, deer, and elk — called biche by Henry. 
Besides this, many of the men were ill, and fourteen were 
in hospital at one time. To help out the lack of sugar or 
molasses, they experimented in making a decoction of 
camas root, which produces a kind of syrup, preferable to 
molasses for sweetening coffee. Among the skins brought 
in by the Indians were occasionally those of tame cats, 
which Henry conjectures to be the offspring of cats lost 
from Spanish ships that had been cast ashore. 
tOm, t, 1904. 
April 22 a ship was seen, which proved to be the 
Isaac Todd, and had on her Mr. J. C. McTavish, who 
was to take charge of Fort George, as governor. Work 
went oh, leading and unloading the ship, buying provi- 
sions, the annoyances of small quarrels between various 
people. The entry in Henry's diary of May 21, 1814, is 
partly finished, and then ends with a dash; for on Sun- 
day, May 22, Alexander Henry, Donald McTavish, and 
five sailors; were drowned while going out to the ship. 
So perished Alexander Henry, the younger, after 
twenty-two years of adventure, extending from the Great 
Lakes to the Pacific, and from the Missouri River north 
to Lake Athabasca. It may fairly be said of all the 
books that have been written by the early travelers and 
traders in America, this is the most interesting and the 
most curious. It is not—as its eminent editor has said— 
a book for boys and girls, but may be read with profit by 
men - George Bird Grinneix. 
Denuding the Mountains, 
Wymore, Nebraska, Sept. 20— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The editorial in the current number of Forest 
and Stream, as well as the letters of Mr. C. P. Ambler 
and Mr. Charles Cristadoro on the subject of forest re- 
serves, contain many practical ideas on a subject in 
which we of the West are especially interested ; and 
while I have not the scientific knowledge to be of much 
assistance in discussing the subject, or kindred subjects, 
I want to make an effort to suggest a few thoughts. In 
the first place, after many years' residence in the arid 
West, I have discovered that we always have our best 
crops when there is an abundance of snow in the moun- 
tains west of us. The snow melting in July and August 
supplies the streams used for irrigating purposes at that 
season of the year when it is most needed ; and I am told 
by men who have studied the subject, that this melting 
snow cools the air and condenses the warm and moist air 
meeting it, until it comes back across the plains in rain. 
From this I conclude that snow storage is of the first im- 
portance, and this brings us right back to the subject of 
forest reserves. The great pine forests of the Rocky 
Mountains are the great snow storage reservoirs. 
But these are being cut at a fearful rate, and I would 
like the assistance of Forest and Stream or its readers 
in finding by what authority it is being done. I have 
four acquaintances who have formed a company and 
gotten possession of a large body of timber land about 
seventy-five miles from Denver along the new Moffatt 
Railroad, and this company already has its saw mills at 
work cutting and sawing the timber. One of the parties 
tells me that they get title to the land, that it costs them 
$2.50 per acre, with additional cost of advertising, etc., 
making he total cost about $400 a quarter section; and 
that they used some script, and had the assistance of 
other parties in taking the land, who afterwards convey 
to the company. He also said it took some manipulation, 
but_ that they had a good thing, and no doubt they have. 
This same thing is being done by other companies and 
individuals, and the mountain lands denuded of its 
forest. 
In the U. S. Statutes that I have (not up-to-date, how- 
ever), I find no authority for this, and would like to 
know where it can be found. If it is found, would it not 
be well for the great Forest and Stream family to put 
our shoulders to the wheel, and by a united effort get the 
authority repealed ? While getting this authority repealed, 
let us make an effort also to have the registers and re- 
ceivers of our land offices put on a salary, and take away 
the $14 filing fees now allowed by law. The fee system 
has been one of the great evils of our land laws. Under 
the salary system, these officers would represent the 
Government; as it is now, they are retained by, and 
represent, the fellow that wants the land. If he does not 
get the land, they don't get the $14. 
Mr. Ambler has given us the watchword— "Stop the 
indiscriminate , cutting of timber." 
' A. D. McCandless. 
A Pillow of Pine Needles. 
(< Coming home a few evenings ago I detected the 
aroma of the pine" about the room, and on inquiry, a 
small pine-needle pillow — a department-store product- 
was produced. When I retired that night I placed it 
under my pillow, and the memories brought back as I 
inhaled the fragrance of the woods, set me dreaming of 
the lakes and the forest. I was carried back to the lake 
shore, the smouldering embers, the stars overhead, the 
splash of the water on the beach, the cry of the loon and 
the sighing of the wind through the pine tops. And I 
dreamed that, awakened by an early robin, I turned out 
from my lean-to with its bed of boughs, took a dip in 
the lake, and rigged my rod, worked my way in the boat 
along the silent and likely spots where the trout were 
on the aleit for an early breakfast. I pick up a trout 
alongside a submerged tree-top, two or three more by a 
sunken log, and yet another alongside a rock, and I 
return to camp. The bean-pot and coffee are in evidence 
as we fry our trout. The smoke from the birchen logs 
adds fuel to our appetites' and flavors our woodland meal. 
How fragrant are the woods, and pleasant are the 
waters to look upon. I pass from one spot in my dream 
to another. I am living over again trips that have been 
many moons apart. I am out on the prairie one moment, 
following the dogs and the chickens, and the next amidst 
the briers and scrub oaks after the whirring Bob White. 
The cool, damp shades of the swamp encircle me as I 
wade along after the dog and hear the woodcock flush. 
Now I am out upon the south exposed hills amidst the 
birches and hemlocks and the lordly partridge and the 
fully grown woodcock engage my attention. I dream 
I am out upon the wind-swept stubble, well covered in 
my pit, and I listen expectantly to the long V far in the 
distance swiftly honking its way toward me and the 
decoys. 
And then again is it dusk, and I am on a duck pass be- 
tween two rice lakes, and the mallards and teal twist and 
dart above my head. 
Lord! what a night I have had all because of a little 
pillow of fragrant pine needles regaling my nostrils, and 
by association carrying me back to days spent with rod 
and gun. Charles Cristadoro. 
