Toward midday we re-embarked, to continue our journey. After having passed several dangerous rapids without accident, always through a country broken by shelving rocks, diversified with hills and verdant prairies, we arrived, on the 29th, at the portage of the Chaudieres or {279} Kettle falls. This is a fall where the water precipitates itself over an immense rock of white marble, veined with red and green, that traverses the bed of the river from N.W. to S.E. We effected the portage immediately, and encamped on the edge of a charming prairie.[153]
We found at this place some Indians who had been fasting, they assured us, for several days. They appeared, in fact, reduced to the most pitiable state, having nothing left but skin and bones, and scarcely able to drag themselves along, so that not without difficulty could they even reach the margin of the river, to get a little water to wet their parched lips. It is a thing that often happens to these poor people, when their chase has not been productive; their principal nourishment consisting, in that case, of the pine moss, which they boil till it is reduced to a sort of glue or black paste, of a sufficient consistence to take the form of biscuit. I had the curiosity to taste this bread, and I thought I had got in my mouth a bit of soap. Yet some of our people, who had been reduced to eat this glue, assured me that {280} when
- [Footnote: of the brigade which Franchère accompanied. Ross was, however, left at the
post, and remained upon the Columbia until 1817.
Joseph McGillivray was son of William (see note 62, ante), and served in the Canadian chasseurs during the War of 1812-15, being present at the capture of Mackinac (1812). The next year he entered the North West Company, and arrived on the Columbia in the autumn, wintering at Fort Okanagan. See his letter in Cox, Adventures, pp. 130, 131. After the union of the North West and Hudson's Bay companies (1821), McGillivray was a factor of the latter in the Columbia district, as late as 1827.—Ed.]
