Seen From A
Distant Eminence, It Then Shines Like A Mirror, Set In The Brown
Landscape.
Around this plain are clustered numerous springs of
various sizes and temperatures.
One of them, of scalding heat,
boils furiously and incessantly, rising to the height of two or
three feet. In another place, there is an aperture in the earth,
from which rushes a column of steam that forms a perpetual cloud.
The ground for some distance around sounds hollow, and startles
the solitary trapper, as he hears the tramp of his horse giving
the sound of a muffled drum. He pictures to himself a mysterious
gulf below, a place of hidden fires, and gazes round him with awe
and uneasiness.
The most noted curiosity, however, of this singular region, is
the Beer Spring, of which trappers give wonderful accounts. They
are said to turn aside from their route through the country to
drink of its waters, with as much eagerness as the Arab seeks
some famous well of the desert. Captain Bonneville describes it
as having the taste of beer. His men drank it with avidity, and
in copious draughts. It did not appear to him to possess any
medicinal properties, or to produce any peculiar effects. The
Indians, however, refuse to taste it, and endeavor to persuade
the white men from doing so.
We have heard this also called the Soda Spring, and described as
containing iron and sulphur. It probably possesses some of the
properties of the Ballston water.
The time had now arrived for Captain Bonneville to go in quest of
the party of free trappers, detached in the beginning of July,
under the command of Mr. Hodgkiss, to trap upon the head waters
of Salmon River. His intention was to unite them with the party
with which he was at present travelling, that all might go into
quarters together for the winter. Accordingly, on the 11th of
November, he took a temporary leave of his band, appointing a
rendezvous on Snake River, and, accompanied by three men, set out
upon his journey. His route lay across the plain of the Portneuf,
a tributary stream of Snake River, called after an unfortunate
Canadian trapper murdered by the Indians. The whole country
through which he passed bore evidence of volcanic convulsions and
conflagrations in the olden time. Great masses of lava lay
scattered about in every direction; the crags and cliffs had
apparently been under the action of fire; the rocks in some
places seemed to have been in a state of fusion; the plain was
rent and split with deep chasms and gullies, some of which were
partly filled with lava.
They had not proceeded far, however, before they saw a party of
horsemen, galloping full tilt toward them. They instantly turned,
and made full speed for the covert of a woody stream, to fortify
themselves among the trees. The Indians came to a halt, and one
of them came forward alone. He reached Captain Bonneville and his
men just as they were dismounting and about to post themselves.
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