Though These Naked And Forlorn-Looking Beings Had Neither
Toilet To Arrange, Nor Beauty To Contemplate, Their Greatest
Passion Was For A Mirror.
It was a "great medicine," in their
eyes.
The sight of one was sufficient, at any time, to throw them
into a paroxysm of eagerness and delight; and they were ready to
give anything they had for the smallest fragment in which they
might behold their squalid features. With this simple instance of
vanity, in its primitive but vigorous state, we shall close our
remarks on the Root Diggers.
30.
Temperature of the climate Root Diggers on horseback An Indian
guide Mountain prospects The Grand Rond Difficulties on Snake
River A scramble over the Blue Mountains Sufferings from
hunger Prospect of the Immahah Valley The exhausted traveller
THE TEMPERATURE of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains is
much milder than in the same latitudes on the Atlantic side; the
upper plains, however, which lie at a distance from the
sea-coast, are subject in winter to considerable vicissitude;
being traversed by lofty "sierras," crowned with perpetual snow,
which often produce flaws and streaks of intense cold This was
experienced by Captain Bonneville and his companions in their
progress westward. At the time when they left the Bannacks Snake
River was frozen hard: as they proceeded, the ice became broken
and floating; it gradually disappeared, and the weather became
warm and pleasant, as they approached a tributary stream called
the Little Wyer; and the soil, which was generally of a watery
clay, with occasional intervals of sand, was soft to the tread of
the horses.
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