Several large mushrooms were brought in by Cruzatte, but these were eaten without pepper, salt, or any kind of grease,--"a very tasteless, insipid food," as the journal says.

To crown all, the mosquitoes were pestilential in their numbers and venom.
Nevertheless, the leaders of the expedition were determined to press on and pass the Bitter Root Mountains as soon as a slight rest at Quamash flats should be had.

If they should tarry until the snows melted from the trail, they would be too late to reach the United States that winter and would be compelled to pass the next winter at some camp high up on the Missouri, as they had passed one winter at Fort Mandan, on their way out.

This is the course of argument which Captain Lewis and Clark took to persuade each other as to the best way out of their difficulties:-- "The snows have formed a hard, coarse bed without crust, on which the horses walk safely without slipping; the chief difficulty, therefore, is to find the road.

In this we may be assisted by the circumstance that, though generally ten feet in depth, the snow has been thrown off by the thick and spreading branches of the trees, and from round the trunk; while the warmth of the trunk itself, acquired by the reflection of the sun, or communicated by natural heat of the earth, which is never frozen under these masses, has dissolved the snow so much that immediately at the roots its depth is not more than one or two feet.