The Travellers Were Now Entering One Of Those Great
Steppes Of The Far West, Where The Prevalent Aridity Of The
Atmosphere Renders The Country Unfit For Cultivation.
In these
regions there is a fresh sweet growth of grass in the spring, but
it is scanty and short, and parches up in the course of the
summer, so that there is none for the hunters to set fire to in
the autumn.
It is a common observation that "above the forks of
the Platte the grass does not burn." All attempts at agriculture
and gardening in the neighborhood of Fort William have been
attended with very little success. The grain and vegetables
raised there have been scanty in quantity and poor in quality.
The great elevation of these plains, and the dryness of the
atmosphere, will tend to retain these immense regions in a state
of pristine wildness.
In the course of a day or two more, the travellers entered that
wild and broken tract of the Crow country called the Black Hills,
and here their journey became toilsome in the extreme. Rugged
steeps and deep ravines incessantly obstructed their progress, so
that a great part of the day was spent in the painful toil of
digging through banks, filling up ravines, forcing the wagons up
the most forbidding ascents, or swinging them with ropes down the
face of dangerous precipices. The shoes of their horses were worn
out, and their feet injured by the rugged and stony roads. The
travellers were annoyed also by frequent but brief storms, which
would come hurrying over the hills, or through the mountain
defiles, rage with great fury for a short time, and then pass
off, leaving everything calm and serene again.
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