occasions, and regarded as a luxury even by the gentlemen of the company, who commonly lived upon salmon. Wishing to make some return for Doctor McLoughlin's hospitality, Lemont, with boyish pleasure, presented him soon after three young peach trees which he had brought from San Juan Fernandez, and which being planted at Vancouver, bore the first peaches ever grown on the Columbia River.
The Owyhee remained at Deer Island through the summer trading with the natives and fishing, the young sailors enjoying the wild strawberries which reddened the fir-bordered prairies where they were at liberty to roam occasionally, running away from a black bear, which "beastie" was very plentiful in this neighborhood. The winter of 1829-30 was spent in Scappoose Bay, just above Saint Helens, whence in the spring she returned to her former position and again traded through the summer, leaving in the autumn for the Sandwich Islands.
It was while the Owyhee was lying in the river in 1829 that a devastating epidemic broke out amongst the Oregon Indians, and spread down the coast as far as the bay of San Francisco. It seemed to originate with the Indians about the ship, and it was Captain Lemont's opinion that it was simply at first an intermittent, occasioned by some mischievous Indians getting their canoes filled with water while pulling up the stakes set in the island by the fishermen. The sickness, however, became epidemical and malignant, so that whole villages died, and there were not enough well persons to care for the sick. This state of affairs was, by the superstitious savages, believed to be intentionally brought about by Captain Dominis, who, they said, had emptied a vial of bad "medicine" into the Columbia River with the design to destroy them; and it probably would have gone hard with the Owyhee's crew but for the influence
