This young man told them, in one of his lucid intervals, that he was from Connecticut, and was named Archibald Pelton; that he had come up the Missouri with Mr.Henry; that all the people at the post established by that trader were massacred by the Blackfeet; that he alone had escaped, and had been wandering, for three years since, with the _Snake_ Indians.[L] Our people took this young man with them.

Arriving at the confluence with the Columbia, of the river whose banks they were following, they perceived that it was the same which had been called _Lewis river_, by the American captain of that name, in 1805.

Here, then, they exchanged their remaining horses for canoes, and so arrived at the establishment, safe and sound, it is true, but in a pitiable condition to see; their clothes being nothing but fluttering rags.
[Footnote L: A thoroughly savage and lazy tribe, inhabiting the plains of the Columbia, between the 43d and 44th degrees of latitude.] The narrative of these gentlemen interested us very much.

They added, that since their separation from Messrs.

Hunt and Crooks, they had neither seen nor heard aught of them, and believed it impossible that they should arrive at the establishment before spring.