Sometimes The Tissue
Is Strings Of Silk-Grass, Twisted And Knotted At The End.
After Remaining With Them About An
Hour, we proceeded down the
channel with an Indian dressed in a sailor's jacket for our pilot,
and on reaching
The main channel were visited by some Indians
who have a temporary residence on a marshy island in the middle
of the river, where is a great abundance of water-fowl."
The tribe of Indians known as the Wahkiacums has entirely disappeared;
but the name survives as that of one of the counties of Washington
bordering on the Columbia. Wahkiacum is the county lying next west
of Cowlitz. When the explorers passed down the river under the piloting
of their Indian friend wearing a sailor's jacket, they were in a thick fog.
This cleared away and a sight greeted their joyful vision.
Their story says: -
"At a distance of twenty miles from our camp, we halted at a
village of Wahkiacums, consisting of seven ill-looking houses,
built in the same form with those above, and situated at the foot
of the high hills on the right, behind two small marshy islands.
We merely stopped to purchase some food and two beaver skins,
and then proceeded. Opposite to these islands the hills
on the left retire, and the river widens into a kind of bay,
crowded with low islands, subject to be overflowed occasionally
by the tide. We had not gone far from this village when,
the fog suddenly clearing away, we were at last presented
with the glorious sight of the ocean - that ocean, the object
of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties.
This animating sight exhilarated the spirits of all the party,
who were still more delighted on hearing the distant roar
of the breakers.
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