more diversified than this fine river. There is in this vicinity a great variety of trees, bushes and different species of the tamarisk tree. The lichnis, a medicinal plant mentioned b; Charlevoix in his history of Canada, grows here abundantly.
We met in the course of that day with only one family, and that was of the Kalispel tribe. Whilst the women were rowing up the river their light canoe, made of fir-tree bark, which contained their children and all the baggage, the men followed along the bank with their rifles or bows in their hands in pursuit of game. In all the little meadows or bottom-lands that we traversed, we saw a great number of horses, which the savages leave there, unguarded, often for months at a tithe; this they call "caging" the horses; in fact, they seldom wander very far away.
On the 4th we entered a cedar and pine forest so dense that in its whole length we could scarcely see beyond the distance of twenty yards. Our beasts of burden suffered a great deal in it from the want of grass. We scarcely got through it after three days' march. It was a real labyrinth; from morning till night we (lid nothing but wind about to avoid thousands of trees, fallen from either fire, storms or age. On issuing from this forest we were charmed by an interesting prospect: Our view extended over the whole surface of the lake called Pend d'Oreille, studded with small islands covered with woods: over its inlets and the hills which overlook them, and which have for the most part their base on the borders of the lake and rise by gradual terraces or elevations until they reach the adjoining mountains, which are covered with perpetual snow. The lake is about thirty miles long and from four to seven wide. Another spectacle, still more magnificent, had arrested our
attention before we reached the lake. At the head of it we traversed a forest, which is certainly a wonder of its kind; there is probably nothing similar to it in America. The savages speak of it as the finest in Oregon, and really every tree which it contains is enormous in its kind. The birch, elm and beach, generally small elsewhere, like the toad of