-
"At The Same Time Captain Clark Observed That The Pine Trees
Had Been Stripped Of Their Bark About The Same
Season,
which our Indian woman says her countrymen do in order to obtain
the sap and the soft parts of
The wood and bark for food.
About eleven o'clock he met a herd of elk and killed two of them;
but such was the want of wood in the neighborhood that he was unable
to procure enough to make a fire, and was therefore obliged to substitute
the dung of the buffalo, with which he cooked his breakfast.
They then resumed their course along an old Indian road.
In the afternoon they reached a handsome valley, watered by a large creek,
both of which extended a considerable distance into the mountain.
This they crossed, and during the evening travelled over a mountainous
country covered with sharp fragments of flint rock; these bruised
and cut their feet very much, but were scarcely less troublesome
than the prickly-pear of the open plains, which have now become
so abundant that it is impossible to avoid them, and the thorns
are so strong that they pierce a double sole of dressed deer-skin;
the best resource against them is a sole of buffalo-hide in
parchment [that is, hard dried]. At night they reached the river
much fatigued, having passed two mountains in the course of the day,
and travelled thirty miles. Captain Clark's first employment,
on lighting a fire, was to extract from his feet the thorns,
which he found seventeen in number."
The dung of the buffalo, exposed for many years to the action of sun,
wind, and rain, became as dry and firm as the finest compressed hay.
As "buffalo chips," in these treeless regions, it was the overland emigrants'
sole dependence for fuel.
The explorers now approached a wonderful pass in the Rocky Mountains
which their journal thus describes:
"A mile and a half beyond this creek [Cottonwood Creek] the rocks approach
the river on both sides, forming a most sublime and extraordinary spectacle.
For five and three quarter miles these rocks rise perpendicularly
from the water's edge to the height of nearly twelve hundred feet.
They are composed of a black granite near their base, but from the lighter
color above, and from the fragments, we suppose the upper part to be flint
of a yellowish brown and cream color.
"Nothing can be imagined more tremendous than the frowning darkness of
these rocks, which project over the river and menace us with destruction.
The river, one hundred and fifty yards in width, seems to have forced
its channel down this solid mass; but so reluctantly has it given way,
that during the whole distance the water is very deep even at the edges,
and for the first three miles there is not a spot, except one of a few yards,
in which a man could stand between the water and the towering perpendicular
of the mountain. The convulsion of the passage must have been terrible,
since at its outlet there are vast columns of rock torn from the mountain,
which are strewed on both sides of the river, the trophies, as it were,
of its victory.
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