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.