- sisted of one hundred and fifty dogs, which we
purchased at the different villages. The Wallah Wallahs received us in their usual friendly manner, and we purchased from them about twenty good horses.
Mr. Read, accompanied by eight men, (excellent hunters,) left us here on an experimental journey to the country of the Shoshoné or Snake Indians, on whose lands he had seen great quantities of beaver in the course of his journey across the continent with Mr. Hunt. His party took sixteen of the horses with them.
After leaving this place the weather set in very cold, accompanied by occasional showers of snow, and we became apprehensive that we should encounter much difficulty in reaching our various wintering posts. We therefore stopped at a village a short distance above Lewis River, on the south side of the Columbia; where, with hard bargaining, and after giving an exorbitant price, we obtained six horses. With these and three men I was ordered to proceed across the country to Spokan House, for the purpose of bringing down a sufficient number of the company's horses to Oakinagan, where the canoes were to stop, the trading goods having to be conveyed from thence by land-carriage to their respective winter destinations.
