Lewis: February 8, 1806

Saturday February 8th 1806. Sent Sergt. Ordway and two men this morning to
join the party with Sergt. Gass and bring the ballance of R. Fields’s Elk.
in the evening they returned with the balance of the flesh of five Elk,
that of one of them having become tainted and unfit for uce. late in the
evening Sergt. Pryor returned with Shannon Labuish and his party down the
Netul. they brought with them the flesh of 4 Elk which those two hunters
had killed. we have both dined and suped on Elk’s tongues and marrow
bones.

I have discovered that the shrub and fruit discribed on the 26th of
January is not that which the Indians call the Shal-lon, but that is such
as is there discribed, and the berry is estemed and used by the natives as
there mentioned except that it is not like the shallon, baked in large
loaves, but is simply dryed in the sun for winter uce, when they either
eat them in thir dryed state or boil them in water. The Shallon is the
production of a shrub which I have heretofore taken to be a speceis of
loral and mentioned as abounding in this neighbourhood and that the Elk
fed much on it’s leaves. it generally rises to the hight of 3 feet but not
unusually attains to that of 5 feet. it grows very thick and is from the
size of a goos quill to that of a man’s thumb, celindric, the bark of the
older or larger part of the stock is of a redish brown colour while that
of the younger branches and succulent shoots are red where most exposed to
the sun and green elsewhere. the stem is simple branching reclining, and
partially fluxouse, or at least the smaler stocks or such parts of them
and the boughs as produce the leaves, take a different direction at the
insertion of every petiole. the leaf is oval four & 3/4 inches in
length and 21/2 in width. petiolate, the petiole short only 3/8th of an
inch in length, celindric with a slight channel on it’s upper side where
it is generally red; undivided or entire, slightly serrate, the apex
termineating in an accute point; the upper disk of a glossey deep green,
the under disk of a pale green; veined. the leaves are also alternate and
two ranked. the root is horizontal puting forth perpendicular radicles.
this shrub is an evergreen. the fruit is a deep perple berry about the
size of a buck short or common black cherry, of an ovate form tho reather
more bluntly pointed, than at the insertion of the peduncle; at the
extremity, the thin coloured membranous pellicle, which forms the surface
of the pericarp, is divided into five accute angular points, which meet in
the center, and contains a soft pulp of the same colour invelloping a
great number of small brown kidney formed seeds. each berry is supported
by a seperate celindric peduncle of half an inch in length; these to the
number of ten or twelve issue from a common peduncle or footstalk which is
fuxouse and forms the termination of the twig of the present years growth;
each peduncle supporting a berry is furnished with one oblong bracte
placed at it’s insertion on the common footstalk which when the fruit is
ripe withers with the peduncle.