a letter in the John McLeod Journal, and is not again heard of West of the Rocky Mts. To this Mr. McDonald, who was one of the very first engaged in fur trading on the waters of the Columbia, as early as 1807, evidently belongs the credit of having first reached the Klamath country in Oregon (See entry Dec. 6th, infra.) From him then must have come the first report of a name for the Indians of that quarter, either a French-Canadian rendition of the native name or a French name assigned by the trappers because of local conditions, French then being the common language of these trapping parties.
A suggestion, not yet a conclusion, as to this name Klamath may be made here. It is well established that many of the geographical and tribal names of the Oregon Country come from the trappers and traders of the various Fur Companies: some incident or some local condition would suggest the name, as "Nez Perces" or "Malheur." The conditions in the Klamath region suggest the name given in this journal, Clammitte, from the French CLAIR-METIS meaning a light mist or cloud. And it is quite as easy to suppose that the Indians in later years attempted to copy this name from the trappers as the reverse. Fremont adopted TLAMATH as the more correct rendition of the Indian pronunciation.
In February of the previous year a trapper named Antoine Sylvaille with others had been sent by Mr. Ogden to the sources of the Owyhee and Malheur rivers with instructions to rejoin the main party upon its return. Sylvaille however returned to Ft. Vancouver independently and reported finding a stream in that quarter very rich with beaver, to which the name Sylvaille River was at once given. This region and that of the Klamath Mr. Ogden was instructed to explore upon this third expedition. According to the series of maps published in London between 1830 to 1850 of "British North America, by permission dedicated to the Honourable Hudson's Bay Company, containing the latest information which their documents furnish, by their obedient servant, J. Arrow-
