If left alone they adhered to the flesh
until they swelled to the size of a musket ball, when they fell off of
themselves. In the summertime gadflies were exasperating in their
attacks on men and cattle. Mosquitoes were a veritable plague, and
midges also, between June and the end of September.
Not the least of the terrors of life in the far north-west in those
days was the vermin that collected in the houses or huts built for a
winter sojourn. It is frequently mentioned, in the records of the
pioneers, how the lodges or tents of the Amerindians swarmed with
fleas and lice. Henry notes on the 19th of April, 1803: "The men began
to demolish our dwelling houses, which were built of bad wood, and to
build new ones of oak. The nests of mice we found, and the swarms of
fleas hopping in every direction, were astonishing."
Henry reached the Pacific coast in 1814, by way of the Kootenay,
Spokane, and Columbia River route, which had been discovered by David
Thompson. He describes well the forests of remarkable trees on this
portion of the Pacific coast, opposite the south end of Vancouver
Island: the crooked oaks loaded with mistletoe, the tall wild cherry
trees, the hazels with trunks thicker than a man's thigh, the
evergreen arbutus, the bracken fern, blackberries, and black
raspberries; and the game in these glades of trees and fern: small
Columbian _Mazama_ deer, large lynxes, bears, gluttons, wolves, foxes,
racoons, and squirrels.
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