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The Shallun or deep purple berry is in form much like the huckkleberry and terminates bluntly with a kind of cap or cover at the end like that fruit; they are attatched seperately to the sides of the boughs of the shrub by a very short stem hanging underneath the same and are frequently placed very near each other on the same bough; it is a full bearer. the berry is easily geathered as it seperates from the bough readily, while the leaf is strongly affixed. the shrub which produces this fruit rises to the hight of 6 or 8 feet sometimes grows on the high lands but moste generally in the swampy or marshey grounds; it is an evergreen. the stem or trunk is from three to 10 Inches in circumference irregularly and much branched, seldom more than one steem proceding from the same root, tho they are frequently associated very thickly. the bark is somewhat rough and of a redish brown colour. the wood is very firm and hard. the leaves are alternate declining and attatched by a short fotstalk to the two horizontal sides of the boughs; the form is a long oval, reather more accute towards its apex than at the point of insertion; it's margin slightly serrate, it's sides colapsing or partially foalding upwards or channelled; it is also thick firm smothe and glossey, the upper surface of a fine deep green, while the under disk is of a pale or whiteish green. this shrub retains it's virdure very perfectly during the winter and is a beautifull shrub. the natives either eat these berrys when ripe immediately from the bushes or dryed in the sun or by means of their sweating kilns; very frequently they pound them and bake then in large loaves of 10 or fifteen pounds; this bread keeps very well during one season and retains the moist jeucies of the fruit much better than by any other method of preservation. this bread is broken and stired in could water until it be sufficiently thick and then eaten; in this way the natives most generally use it.
There is a Species of huckkleberry Common to the piney lands from the Commencement of the Columbian Vally to the Sea coast; it rises to the hight of 6 or 8 feet, is a Simple branching, Somewhat defused Stem; the main body or trunk is cilindric branches are green Smothe squar, and put foth a number of alternet branches of the Same Colour and form from the two horizontal Sides only. the frute is a small deep purple berry which the nativs inform us is very good, the leaf is thin of a pale green and Small being 3/4 of an inch in length and 3/8 in width; oval terminateing more accoutely at the apax, than near the insersion of the footstalk which is at the base vened nearly entire; footstalks Short and their position in respect to each other is alternate and too ranked, proceeding from the horizontal Side of the bough only.
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