Captain Bonneville Attempted To Sound Some Of These
Openings, But Without Any Satisfactory Result.
A stone dropped
into one of them reverberated against the sides for apparently a
very great depth, and, by its sound, indicated the same kind of
substance with the surface, as long as the strokes could be
heard.
The horse, instinctively sagacious in avoiding danger,
shrinks back in alarm from the least of these chasms, pricking up
his ears, snorting and pawing, until permitted to turn away.
We have been told by a person well acquainted with the country
that it is sometimes necessary to travel fifty and sixty miles to
get round one of these tremendous ravines. Considerable streams,
like that of Godin's River, that run with a bold, free current,
lose themselves in this plain; some of them end in swamps, others
suddenly disappear, finding, no doubt, subterranean outlets.
Opposite to these chasms Snake River makes two desperate leaps
over precipices, at a short distance from each other; one twenty,
the other forty feet in height.
The volcanic plain in question forms an area of about sixty miles
in diameter, where nothing meets the eye but a desolate and awful
waste; where no grass grows nor water runs, and where nothing is
to be seen but lava. Ranges of mountains skirt this plain, and,
in Captain Bonneville's opinion, were formerly connected, until
rent asunder by some convulsion of nature. Far to the east the
Three Tetons lift their heads sublimely, and dominate this wide
sea of lava - one of the most striking features of a wilderness
where everything seems on a scale of stern and simple grandeur.
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