Beneath Him, The Rocky Mountains
Seemed To Open All Their Secret Recesses:
Deep, solemn valleys;
treasured lakes; dreary passes; rugged defiles, and foaming
torrents; while beyond their savage precincts, the eye
Was lost
in an almost immeasurable landscape; stretching on every side
into dim and hazy distance, like the expanse of a summer's sea.
Whichever way he looked, he beheld vast plains glimmering with
reflected sunshine; mighty streams wandering on their shining
course toward either ocean, and snowy mountains, chain beyond
chain, and peak beyond peak, till they melted like clouds into
the horizon. For a time, the Indian fable seemed realized: he had
attained that height from which the Blackfoot warrior, after
death, first catches a view of the land of souls, and beholds the
happy hunting grounds spread out below him, brightening with the
abodes of the free and generous spirits. The captain stood for a
long while gazing upon this scene, lost in a crowd of vague and
indefinite ideas and sensations. A long-drawn inspiration at
length relieved him from this enthralment of the mind, and he
began to analyze the parts of this vast panorama. A simple
enumeration of a few of its features may give some idea of its
collective grandeur and magnificence.
The peak on which the captain had taken his stand commanded the
whole Wind River chain; which, in fact, may rather be considered
one immense mountain, broken into snowy peaks and lateral spurs,
and seamed with narrow valleys. Some of these valleys glittered
with silver lakes and gushing streams; the fountain heads, as it
were, of the mighty tributaries to the Atlantic and Pacific
Oceans. Beyond the snowy peaks, to the south, and far, far below
the mountain range, the gentle river, called the Sweet Water, was
seen pursuing its tranquil way through the rugged regions of the
Black Hills. In the east, the head waters of Wind River wandered
through a plain, until, mingling in one powerful current, they
forced their way through the range of Horn Mountains, and were
lost to view. To the north were caught glimpses of the upper
streams of the Yellowstone, that great tributary of the Missouri.
In another direction were to be seen some of the sources of the
Oregon, or Columbia, flowing to the northwest, past those
towering landmarks the Three Tetons, and pouring down into the
great lava plain; while, almost at the captain's feet, the Green
River, or Colorado of the West, set forth on its wandering
pilgrimage to the Gulf of California; at first a mere mountain
torrent, dashing northward over a crag and precipice, in a
succession of cascades, and tumbling into the plain where,
expanding into an ample river, it circled away to the south, and
after alternately shining out and disappearing in the mazes of
the vast landscape, was finally lost in a horizon of mountains.
The day was calm and cloudless, and the atmosphere so pure that
objects were discernible at an astonishing distance. The whole of
this immense area was inclosed by an outer range of shadowy
peaks, some of them faintly marked on the horizon, which seemed
to wall it in from the rest of the earth.
It is to be regretted that Captain Bonneville had no instruments
with him with which to ascertain the altitude of this peak. He
gives it as his opinion that it is the loftiest point of the
North American continent; but of this we have no satisfactory
proof. It is certain that the Rocky Mountains are of an altitude
vastly superior to what was formerly supposed. We rather incline
to the opinion that the highest peak is further to the northward,
and is the same measured by Mr. Thompson, surveyor to the
Northwest Company; who, by the joint means of the barometer and
trigonometric measurement, ascertained it to be twenty-five
thousand feet above the level of the sea; an elevation only
inferior to that of the Himalayas.
For a long time, Captain Bonneville remained gazing around him
with wonder and enthusiasm; at length the chill and wintry winds,
whirling about the snow-clad height, admonished him to descend.
He soon regained the spot where he and his companions [companion]
had thrown off their coats, which were now gladly resumed, and,
retracing their course down the peak, they safely rejoined their
companions on the border of the lake.
Notwithstanding the savage and almost inaccessible nature of
these mountains, they have their inhabitants. As one of the party
was out hunting, he came upon the solitary track of a man in a
lonely valley. Following it up, he reached the brow of a cliff,
whence he beheld three savages running across the valley below
him. He fired his gun to call their attention, hoping to induce
them to turn back. They only fled the faster, and disappeared
among the rocks. The hunter returned and reported what he had
seen. Captain Bonneville at once concluded that these belonged to
a kind of hermit race, scanty in number, that inhabit the highest
and most inaccessible fastnesses. They speak the Shoshonie
language, and probably are offsets from that tribe, though they
have peculiarities of their own, which distinguish them from all
other Indians. They are miserably poor; own no horses, and are
destitute of every convenience to be derived from an intercourse
with the whites. Their weapons are bows and stone-pointed arrows,
with which they hunt the deer, the elk, and the mountain sheep.
They are to be found scattered about the countries of the
Shoshonie, Flathead, Crow, and Blackfeet tribes; but their
residences are always in lonely places, and the clefts of the
rocks.
Their footsteps are often seen by the trappers in the high and
solitary valleys among the mountains, and the smokes of their
fires descried among the precipices, but they themselves are
rarely met with, and still more rarely brought to a parley, so
great is their shyness, and their dread of strangers.
As their poverty offers no temptation to the marauder, and as
they are inoffensive in their habits, they are never the objects
of warfare:
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