side; the river becomes two and one-half
miles in width; the low grounds are extensive and well supplied with
wood. The Indians whom we left at the portage passed us on their way
down the river, and seven others, who were descending in a canoe for the
purpose of trading below, camped with us. We had made from the foot of
the great shoot twenty-nine miles to-day. The ebb tide rose at our camp
about nine inches; the flood must rise much higher. We saw great numbers
of water-fowl, such as swan, geese, ducks of various kinds, gulls,
plovers, and the white and gray brant, of which last we killed
eighteen."

Chapter XVII -- From Tidewater to the Sea

Near the mouth of the river which the explorers named Quicksand River
(now Sandy), they met a party of fifteen Indians who had lately been
down to the mouth of the Columbia. These people told the white men that
they had seen three vessels at anchor below, and, as these must needs
be American, or European, the far-voyaging explorers were naturally
pleased. When they had camped that night, they received other visitors
of whom the journal makes mention:--

"A canoe soon after arrived from the village at the foot of the last
rapid, with an Indian and his family, consisting of a wife, three
children, and a woman who had been taken prisoner from the Snake
Indians, living on a river from the south, which we afterward found to
be the Multnomah. Sacajawea was immediately introduced to her, in hopes
that, being a Snake Indian, they might understand each other; but their
language was not sufficiently intelligible to permit them to converse
together. The Indian had a gun with a brass barrel and cock, which he
appeared to value highly."

The party had missed the Multnomah River in their way down, although
this is one of the three largest tributaries of the Columbia, John Day's
River and the Des Chutes being the other two. A group of islands
near the mouth of the Multnomah hides it from the view of the passing
voyager. The stream is now more generally known as the Willamette, or
Wallamet. The large city of Portland, Oregon, is built on the river,
about twelve miles from its junction with the Columbia. The Indian
tribes along the banks of the Multnomah, or Willamette, subsisted
largely on the wappatoo, an eatable root, about the size of a hen's egg
and closely resembling a potato. This root is much sought after by the
Indians and is eagerly bought by tribes living in regions where it