Fort Clatsop, Astoria, OR The morning is clear and cold. The enlisted men spend the day gathering firewood and making leather. Boiled elk is again on the menu, and Lewis describes bearberry berries.
Scraping a Hide
Fort Clatsop National Historic Park
© 2017 by John Montigue. Used by permission.
Fort Clatsop Tasks
It froze very hard during last night, & this morning was clear cold weather, Some of the Men in the fort were employed cutting wood for our fires, and others in making Cloathes for our party.
—Meriwether Lewis
Keen Appetites, Lean Elk
Nothing worthy of notice occurred today. our fare is the flesh of lean elk boiled with pure water, and a little salt. the whale blubber which we have used very sparingly is now exhausted. on this food I do not feel strong, but enjoy the most perfect health;— a keen appetite supplys in a great degree the want of more luxurious sauses or dishes, and still render my ordinary meals not uninteresting to me, for I find myself sometimes enquiring of the cook whether dinner or breakfast is ready.—
—Meriwether Lewis
Bearberry (kinnikinnick)
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
© 2007 by Walter Siegmund. Permission granted via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Insipid Bearberry Berries
the natives on this side of the Rockey mountains who can procure this berry invariably use it; to me it is a very tasteless and insippid fruit . . . . the colour of this fruit is a fine scarlet. the natives usually eat them without any preperation. the fruit ripens in september and remains on the bushes all winter. the frost appears to take no effect on it. these berries are sometimes geathered and hung in their lodges in bags where they dry without further trouble, for in their most succulent state they appear to be almost as dry as flour.—
—Meriwether Lewis
Weather Diary
aspect of the weather at rise
Wind at Weather at 4 OC. P.M. Wind at 4 OC. P.M. fair N E fair N E not so could, water in a vessel exposed to the [air] during the night freized 3/8ths of an inch only.
—Meriwether Lewis[1]To assist the reader, the editor of this web page has omitted the “Day of the month” column and spelled out some abbreviations.
Fort Clatsop is a High Potential Historic Site along the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail managed by the U.S. National Park Service. The site is managed by the Lewis and Clark National and State Historic Parks.
Notes
| ↑1 | To assist the reader, the editor of this web page has omitted the “Day of the month” column and spelled out some abbreviations. |
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