8 
THE CONDOR 
Vol. XVIII 
was thus described by Townsend: “Captain Wyeth and Milton Sublette took 
the lead, Mr. N [uttall] and myself rode beside them ; then the men in double 
file, each leading, with a line, two horses heavily laden, and Captain Thing 
(Captain W’s assistant), brought up the rear. The band of missionaries, with 
their horned cattle, rode along the flanks.”* Later on at Ft. Hall some of the 
caravan went on ahead leaving 30 men and 116 horses in Wyeth’s party during 
the latter days of the march. They left Independence on April 28, reaching 
Fort Vancouver on the Columbia on September 16, after the usual vicissitudes 
of transcontinental travel. The narrative of their journey written and pub- 
lished by Townsend is most interesting reading, full of incidents of buffalo 
hunting and of the habits and peculiarities of the various tribes of Indians 
with which they came in contact. 
Townsend got many birds en route, a number of which were new', and 
many others at Fort Vancouver and elsewhere about the mouth of the Colum- 
bia. Unfortunately he gives but little information about birds in his narrative, 
apparently deeming ornithology of but little general interest, and only once 
does he refer to his collection. This is in a description of a violent storm 
which overtook them on the Columbia below Fort Walla Walla during which 
Mr. Nuttall’s dried plants were somewhat damaged, “but”, he says, “my bale 
of birds escaped without any material injury”. 
The Band-tailed Pigeon appealed to the sportsman in him, and he writes 
of it on May 21, 1835, as “very abundant near the river, found in flocks of 
fifty to sixty and perching upon the dead trees along the margin of the stream. 
They are feeding upon the buds of the balsam poplar ; are very fat and excel- 
lent eating. In the course of the morning, and without leaving the canoe, I 
killed enough to supply our people with provisions for two days”f. The Pin- 
tail duck also occurred in abundance, and Townsend and an Indian killed 26 
by simultaneous discharge of their guns. 
There has been some comment among our friends the herpetologists as to 
why Townsend failed to procure any reptiles. A close perusal of his narra- 
tive clears up any doubt on this point. In speaking of the behavior of one 
of their men after reaching the Columbia he says: “His appetite for ardent 
spirits was of the most inordinate kind. During the journey across the coun- 
try I constantly carried a large two-gallon bottle of whiskey, in which T depos- 
ited various kinds of lizards and serpents, and when we arrived at the Colum- 
bia the vessel was almost full of these crawling creatures. I left the bottle on 
board the brig when I paid my first visit to the Willammet falls, and on my 
return found that he had decanted the liquor from the precious reptiles which 
I had destined for immortality, and he and one of his pot companions had been 
‘happy’ upon it for a whole day. ... I did not discover the theft until too 
late to save my specimens, which were in consequence all destroyed. ”f 
Townsend and Nuttall visited the Sandwich Islands during the winter of 
1834-5. Nuttall then visited California, stopping at Monterey, Santa Barbara 
and San Diego, and returning round the Horn reached home in 1836. Town- 
send remained until 1837, and then returned by the same route, reaching home 
November 17. 
Nuttall obtained specimens of the Yellow-billed Magpie and the Tricol- 
ored Redwing which he gave to Audubon who published them in his great 
♦Townsend's Narrative, Phila. 1839, p. 27. 
fdo. p. 220. 
tdo. p. 224. 
