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.
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