Here, The Rocks Were
Piled In The Most Fantastic Crags And Precipices; And In Another
Place, They Were Succeeded By Delightful Valleys Carpeted With
Green-Award.
The whole of this wild and varied scenery was
dominated by immense mountains rearing their distant peaks into
the clouds.
"The grandeur and originality of the views, presented
on every side," says Captain Bonneville, "beggar both the pencil
and the pen. Nothing we had ever gazed upon in any other region
could for a moment compare in wild majesty and impressive
sternness, with the series of scenes which here at every turn
astonished our senses, and filled us with awe and delight."
Indeed, from all that we can gather from the journal before us,
and the accounts of other travellers, who passed through these
regions in the memorable enterprise of Astoria, we are inclined
to think that Snake River must be one of the most remarkable for
varied and striking scenery of all the rivers of this continent.
From its head waters in the Rocky Mountains, to its junction with
the Columbia, its windings are upward of six hundred miles
through every variety of landscape. Rising in a volcanic region,
amid extinguished craters, and mountains awful with the traces of
ancient fires, it makes its way through great plains of lava and
sandy deserts, penetrates vast sierras or mountainous chains,
broken into romantic and often frightful precipices, and crowned
with eternal snows; and at other times, careers through green and
smiling meadows, and wide landscapes of Italian grace and beauty.
Wildness and sublimity, however, appear to be its prevailing
characteristics.
Captain Bonneville and his companions had pursued their journey a
considerable distance down the course of Snake River, when the
old chief halted on the bank, and dismounting, recommended that
they should turn their horses loose to graze, while he summoned a
cousin of his from a group of lodges on the opposite side of the
stream. His summons was quickly answered. An Indian, of an active
elastic form, leaped into a light canoe of cotton-wood, and
vigorously plying the paddle, soon shot across the river.
Bounding on shore, he advanced with a buoyant air and frank
demeanor, and gave his right hand to each of the party in turn.
The old chief, whose hard name we forbear to repeat, now
presented Captain Bonneville, in form, to his cousin, whose name,
we regret to say, was no less hard being nothing less than
Hay-she-in-cow-cow. The latter evinced the usual curiosity to
know all about the strangers, whence they came whither they were
going, the object of their journey, and the adventures they had
experienced. All these, of course, were ample and eloquently set
forth by the communicative old chief. To all his grandiloquent
account of the bald-headed chief and his countrymen, the Big
Hearts of the East, his cousin listened with great attention, and
replied in the customary style of Indian welcome. He then desired
the party to await his return, and, springing into his canoe,
darted across the river.
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