Clark: February 13, 1806

Tuesday February 13th 1806. The Clatsop left us this morning at 11 A.M. Nothing happened during the day worthy of notice. Yesterday we completed the operation of drying the meat, and think we have a sufficient stock to last us this month. The Indians inform us that we shall have a great abundance of small fish in March, which from the description must be the herring. These people have also informed us that one Moore, who sometimes touches at this place and traded with the natives of this coast, had on board his ship 3 cows, and that when he left them he continued his course along the N.W. coast. I think this (if those cows were not coats) is strong circumstantial proof that there is a settlement of white persons at Nootka Sound or some place to the N.W. of us on the coast.

There are also two species of fern which are common to this country besides that before mentioned, of which the natives eat the roots. These two, from their disparity in point of size, I shall distinguish as the large and small fern. Both species remain green all winter.

The large fern rises to the height of 3 or 4 feet. The stem is a common footstalk or rib which proceeds immediately from the radix, which is somewhat flat on two sides, about the size of a man's arm, and covered with innumerable black coarse capillary radicles which issue from every part of its surface. One of those roots, or a connected bead of them, will send forth from 20 to 40 of those common footstalks, all of which decline or bend outwards from the common center. These ribs are cylindric and marked longitudinally their whole length with a groove or channel on their upper side. On either side of this groove, a little below its edge, the leafets are inserted, being partly petiolate for about 2/3 of the length of the middle rib, commencing at the bottom, and from thence to the extremity sessile. The rib is terminated by a single undivided lanceolate jagged leafet. The leafets are lanceolate, from 2 to 4 inches in length, jagged, and have a small acute angular projection and are obliquely cut at the base on either side of the rib of the leafet. The upper surface is smooth and of a deep green; the underside is of a pale green and covered with a brown substance of a woolly appearance, particularly near the center fiber or rib. These leafets are alternately pointed; they are in number from 110 to 140, shortest at the two extremities of the common footstalk and longest in the center, gradually lengthening and diminishing as they succeed each other.

The small fern also rises with a common footstalk from the radix, and these are from 4 to 8 in number, about 8 inches long. The central rib is marked with a slight longitudinal groove throughout its whole length. The leafets are oppositely pinnate for about a [portion] of the length of the common footstalk from the bottom, and thence alternately pinnate; the footstalk terminates in a simple, undivided, nearly entire lanceolate leafet. The leafets are oblong, obtuse, convex, absolutely entire, marked on the upper disk with a slight longitudinal groove in place of the central rib, smooth and of a deep green. Near the upper extremity those leafets are decursively pinnate, as are also those of the large fern.

The grasses of this neighborhood are generally coarse, harsh, and sedge-like, and grow in large tufts. There are none except in the open grounds. Near the coast, on the top of some of the untimbered hills, there is a finer and softer species which much resembles the greensward. The salt marshes also produce a coarse grass, bulrushes, and the cattail flags. Of the last two, the natives make great use in preparing their mats, bags, etc. In those bags they carry their fish, berries, roots, etc.