SOON after they had fixed their camp, the explorers
bade farewell to their good friend Tunnachemoo-
toolt and his young men, who returned to their homes
farther down the river. Others of the Nez Percé, or Cho-
punnish, nation visited them, and the strangers were inter-
ested in watching the Indians preparing for their hunt.
As they were to hunt the deer, they had the head, horns,
and hide of that animal so prepared that when it was
placed on the head and body of a hunter, it gave a very
deceptive idea of a deer; the hunter could move the head
of the decoy so that it looked like a deer feeding, and the
suspicious animals were lured within range of the Indians'
bow and arrow.

On the sixteenth of May, Hohastillpilp and his young
men also left the white men's camp and returned to their
own village. The hunters of the party did not meet with
much luck in their quest for game, only one deer and a few
pheasants being brought in for several days. The party
were fed on roots and herbs, a species of onion being
much prized by them. Bad weather confined them to
their camp, and a common entry in their journal re-
fers to their having slept all night in a pool of water
formed by the falling rain; their tent-cover was a worn-
out leathern affair no longer capable of shedding the rain.
While it rained in the meadows where they were camped,

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