"September 15th. Camped near an old snow-bank, some of which was melted, in the absence of water; and here the party supped on the remains of the colt killed yesterday. Our only game to-day was two pheasants; the horses, on which we calculated as a last resource, began to fail us, for two of them were so poor and worn out with fatigue that we were obliged to leave them behind. "September 16th. Three hours before daybreak it began to snow, and continued all day, so that by evening it was six or eight inches deep. This covered the track so completely that we were obliged constantly to halt and examine, lest we should lose the route. In many places we had nothing to guide us, except the branches of the trees, which, being low, had been rubbed by the burdens of the Indian horses.... Wet to the skin, and so cold that we were anxious lest our feet should be frozen, as we had only thin moccasins to defend them.... We camped on a piece of low ground, thickly timbered, but scarcely large enough to permit us to lie level. We had now made thirteen miles. We were all very wet, cold, and hungry.... Were obliged to kill a second colt for our supper." Of the stock of portable provisions there remained only a few cans of soup and about twenty pounds of bear's oil; and there was "no living creature in these mountains, except a few pheasants, a small species of gray squirrel, and a blue bird of the vulture kind about the size of a turtle-dove or jay; even these are difficult to shoot." Again Captain Clark went ahead. For several days he suffered extremely from hunger and exposure; but on the 20th he descended into an open valley, where he came upon a band of Nez Perce Indians, who gave him food. But after his long abstinence, when he ate a plentiful meal of fish his stomach revolted, and for several days he was quite ill. Matters fared badly with Captain Lewis's party, following on Clark's trail. On the day of Clark's departure, they could not leave their night's camp until nearly noon, "because, being obliged in the evening to loosen our horses to enable them to find subsistence, it is always difficult to collect them in the morning.... We were so fortunate as to kill a few pheasants and a prairie wolf, which, with the remainder of the horse, supplied us with one meal, the last of our provisions; our food for the morrow being wholly dependent on the chance of our guns." Bearing heavy burdens, and losing much time with the continued straying of the horses, they made but indifferent progress, and it was not until the 22d that they reached the Nez Perce village and joined Captain Clark. Then they, too, almost to a man, suffered severe illness, caused by the unwonted abundance of food. From the high altitudes and the scant diet of horseflesh to the lower levels of the valley and a plentiful diet of fish and camass-root was too great a change.