Winter quarters were established on the south side at a place not far above the mouth of the river and three miles up a small stream called the Netul. The camp was thirty-five feet above high tide, two hundred yards from the creek, and seven miles east of the sea. Houses were built in a tall pine grove and the village was named Fort Clatsop, after the neighbouring tribe. For some time they had been subjected to constant rain, for the coast hereabouts is a wet one, totally unlike the region they had passed through on the Missouri, which is very dry. The food question continued to be the chief one. Their diet consisted of pounded fish varied by wapatoo roots, and some elk-meat. No serious illness occurred. Every man was buoyed up by a desire to make the expedition a success, and with every undertaking of this kind success ultimately depends on the spirit of the men. The winter wore away and they managed to evade starvation. [Illustration: Snake River below Lewiston. On Lewis and Clark's Trail. Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.] One writer refers to the story that a Boston brig put in to the mouth of the river in November or December of this year, but it seems that this story has some error in it, for if the brig had come its captain would have been after furs, and the natives would have known of the visit, and surely would have mentioned it to the explorers. As they did not, it seems that there must be an error in date and that the visit of the brig was the following year, when her captain obtained papers from the natives telling of Lewis and Clark's stay. On the 23d of March, 1806, they turned their backs on Fort Clatsop and the Western Ocean and retraced their course up the Columbia. Like Cabeza de Vaca they had acquired fame as healers and their services were in demand as medicine-men, a fortunate circumstance, for they now had hardly anything to trade. Even their clothes were made of skins. By means of eye-water and other simple remedies they were able to purchase an occasional horse, a few dogs, and roots and fish. The generosity of one chief was greater than any white man would have been likely to offer, for he told them to help themselves to his horses without remuneration. At length they surmounted the Lolo Pass again and dropped down on the eastern slope of the Bitter Root range to Traveller's Rest. Here Lewis turned up one of the eastern forks of Clark River and crossed to the Missouri by a more direct route, while Clark followed the Bitter Root again, and at its head crossed to the stream they had followed out, and descended to where the canoes had been left. With these, a party under Ordway was sent down the river, and Clark with the rest went from the three forks to the head of the Yellowstone. Building canoes at a point a day or two down this river, they descended it to the Missouri, waiting for Lewis to come to them, a little below the mouth.