, subsisting sometimes on horse meat,
sometimes on beavers and their skins, and a part of the time on roots.

About the last of March, the other Canadian gave out and was left with
a lodge of Shoshonies; but Mr. Crooks and John Day still kept on,
and finding the snow sufficiently diminished, undertook, from Indian
information, to cross the last mountain ridge. They happily succeeded,
and afterwards fell in with the Wallah-Wallahs, a tribe of Indians
inhabiting the banks of a river of the same name, and reputed as being
frank, hospitable, and sincere. They proved worthy of the character, for
they received the poor wanderers kindly, killed a horse for them to eat,
and directed them on their way to the Columbia. They struck the river
about the middle of April, and advanced down it one hundred miles, until
they came within about twenty miles of the falls.

Here they met with some of the "chivalry" of that noted pass, who
received them in a friendly way, and set food before them; but, while
they were satisfying their hunger, perfidiously seized their rifles.
They then stripped them naked, and drove them off, refusing the
entreaties of Mr. Crooks for a flint and steel of which they had robbed
him; and threatening his life if he did not instantly depart.

In this forlorn plight, still worse off than before, they renewed their
wanderings. They now sought to find their way back to the hospitable
Wallah-Wallahs, and had advanced eighty miles along the river, when
fortunately, on the very morning that they were going to leave the
Columbia and strike inland, the canoes of Mr. Stuart hove in sight.

It is needless to describe the joy of these poor men at once more
finding themselves among countrymen and friends, or of the honest
and hearty welcome with which they were received by their fellow
adventurers. The whole party now continued down the river, passed all
the dangerous places without interruption, and arrived safely at Astoria
on the 11th of May.

CHAPTER XLII

Comprehensive Views.--To Supply the Russian Fur
Establishment.--An Agent Sent to Russia.--Project of an
Annual Ship.--The Beaver Fitted Out.--Her Equipment and
Crew.--Instructions to the Captain.--The Sandwich
Islands.--Rumors of the Fate of the Tonquin.--Precautions on
Reaching the Mouth of the Columbia.

HAVING traced the fortunes of the two expeditions by sea and land to the
mouth of the Columbia, and presented a view of af