Persuaded they were there with hostile intent,
they advanced upon them, levelled their rifles, and killed twenty
five of them upon the spot. The rest fled to a short distance,
then halted and turned about, howling and whining like wolves,
and uttering the most piteous wailings. The trappers chased them
in every direction; the poor wretches made no defence, but fled
with terror; neither does it appear from the accounts of the
boasted victors, that a weapon had been wielded or a weapon
launched by the Indians throughout the affair. We feel perfectly
convinced that the poor savages had no hostile intention, but had
merely gathered together through motives of curiosity, as others
of their tribe had done when Captain Bonneville and his
companions passed along Snake River.
The trappers continued down Ogden's River, until they ascertained
that it lost itself in a great swampy lake, to which there was no
apparent discharge. They then struck directly westward, across
the great chain of California mountains intervening between these
interior plains and the shores of the Pacific.
For three and twenty days they were entangled among these
mountains, the peaks and ridges of which are in many places
covered with perpetual snow. Their passes and defiles present the
wildest scenery, partaking of the sublime rather than the
beautiful, and abounding with frightful precipices.
