stipulations for payment, with both specimens for drying and seeds. The owner, whom I shortly met, seeing the prize under my arm, appeared much displeased, but was propitiated with a present of European tobacco, and becoming good friends with me, gave the above description of its culture, saying that wood ashes invariably made it grow very large.
I was much disappointed at being unable to obtain cones of a fine Pinus which grows abundantly on the banks of the Columbia. The trees were too large to be felled with my hatchet, and, as to climbing, I had already learned the propriety of leaving no property below on such occasions. The top of the tree, where the cones hang, was also too weak to bear me, and its height so great that all my attempts to bring them down by firing at them with swan-shot were unsuccessful.
On the 20th of February, Jean Baptiste McKay, one of the hunters, returned to the establishment from his hunting excursion to the southward, and brought me one cone of the species of Pinus, which I had requested him to procure last August, when I was at the Multnomak. The first knowledge I had of this grand tree was derived from the very large seeds and scales of the cone which I had seen in the Indian's shotpouch. After treating the latter to a smoke, which must be done before any questions are put, I inquired and found that he had brought this prize from the mountains to the southward, and as McKay was going in that direction, I begged him to procure me twelve cones, a bag of seeds, a few twigs and some of the gum. Being, however, late in autumn ere he arrived at the place where the trees grow, all the seed was gone, and he therefore brought only a cone to show me; but as he gave strict orders to his Indian friends, I feel certain of securing abundance of it in the summer. This species belongs to Pursh's second section; the tree measures from twenty to fifty feet in circumference, and is one hundred and seventy to two hundred and twenty feet high, nearly unbranched to within a short distance of the top where it forms a perfect umbel. The trunk is remarkably straight, the wood fine, and yielding a great quantity of resin. Growing trees.
