On the 25th, Messrs.

Wallace and Halsey returned from their winter quarters with seventeen packs of furs, and thirty-two bales of dried venison.

The last article was received with a great deal of pleasure, as it would infallibly be needed for the journey we were about to undertake.Messrs.Clarke, D.Stuart and M'Kenzie also arrived, in the beginning of June, with one hundred and forty packs of furs, the fruit of two years' trade at the post on the _Okenakan_, and one year on the _Spokan_.[O] [Footnote O: The profits of the last establishment were slender; because the people engaged at it were obliged to subsist on horse-flesh, and they ate ninety horses during the winter.] The wintering partners (that is to say, Messrs.

Clarke and David Stuart) dissenting from the proposal to abandon the country as soon as we intended, the thing being (as they observed) impracticable, from the want of provisions for the journey and horses to transport the goods; the project was deferred, as to its execution, till the following April.
So these gentlemen, having taken a new lot of merchandise, set out again for their trading posts on the 7th of July.

But Mr.M'Kenzie, whose goods had been pillaged by the natives (it will be remembered), remained at Astoria, and was occupied with the care of collecting as great a quantity as possible of dried salmon from the Indians.