When Mary and her husband, George, saw my roll of bedding, which they supposed to be simply blankets, they protested to Mr. Barker that I would not need them, that there was "hy-iu mit-lite pa-se-se" (plenty of covering on the bed). I told them, however, that I could sleep better in my own blankets and preferred to use them. I took the bundle into my room, spread the sleeping-bag on the bed and crawled into it. The outer covering of the bag being of thick, hard canvas, I hoped it would prove an effectual barrier against the assaults of the vermin, and that they might not find the portal by which I entered, and so it proved.
George and Mary live in a very well-built, comfortable, one-story frame cottage, divided into two rooms; the kitchen, dining-room, parlor and family sleeping-room all in one, and the spare room being the other. The house has four windows and one door, a shingle roof and a board floor. They have a cooking-stove, several chairs, a table, cupboard, etc. The bedstead on which I slept was homemade, but neat and substantial. It was furnished with a white cotton tick, filled with straw, feather pillows, several clean-looking blankets, and a pair of moderately clean cotton sheets. I have slept in much worse-looking beds in hotels kept by white people.
This Indian village, Harrison river, or Skowlitz, as the Indians call both the river and the village, is composed of about twenty families, living in houses of about the same class and of the same general design as the one described, although some are slightly larger and better, while others are not quite so good. All have been built by white carpenters, or the greater part of the work was done by them, and the lumber and other materials were manufactured by white men. None of the dwellings have ever been painted inside or out, but there is a neat mission church in the village that has been honored with a coat of white paint. There are a few log shacks standing near, that look very much as if they had been built by native industry. The frame houses, I am informed, were erected by the Government and the church by the Catholic Missionary Society.
I was not compelled to eat with George and Mary, for Mr. Barker had kindly invited me to breakfast with him, and when I reached his store, at the breakfast hour in the morning, I found a neat inviting-looking table in the room back of the store, loaded with broiled ham, baked potatoes, good bread and butter, a pot of steaming coffee, etc.; all of which we enjoyed intensely. Mr. Barker informed me there was a cluster of hot springs ten miles up the river, at the foot of Harrison Lake, the source of Harrison river, near which a large hotel had lately been built. Upon inquiry as to a means of getting up there, I learned that he had employed a couple of Indians to take some freight up that morning in a canoe, and that I could probably secure a passage with them. As Harrison Lake, or rather the mountains surrounding it, were the hunting-grounds which Douglass Bill had selected, and as we would have to pass these hot springs en route, I decided to go there and wait for him. I therefore arranged with Barker to send him up to the springs, when he should call for me at the store, and took passage in the freight canoe.