Here They Halted For The Night, And Ben
Jones Having Luckily Trapped A Beaver, And Killed Two Buffalo
Bulls, They Remained All The Next Day Encamped, Feasting And
Reposing, And Allowing Their Jaded Horse To Rest From His Labors.
The little stream on which they were encamped, was one of the
head waters of the Platte River, which flows into the Missouri;
it was, in fact, the northern fork, or branch of that river,
though this the travellers did not discover until long
afterwards.
Pursuing the course of this stream for about twenty
miles, they came to where it forced a passage through a range of
high hills, covered with cedars, into an extensive low country,
affording excellent pasture to numerous herds of buffalo. Here
they killed three cows, which were the first they had been able
to get, having hitherto had to content themselves with bull beef,
which at this season of the year is very poor. The hump meat
afforded them a repast fit for an epicure.
Late on the afternoon of the 30th, they came to where the stream,
now increased to a considerable size, poured along in a ravine
between precipices of red stone, two hundred feet in height. For
some distance it dashed along, over huge masses of rock, with
foaming violence, as if exasperated by being compressed into so
narrow a channel, and at length leaped down a chasm that looked
dark and frightful in the gathering twilight.
For a part of the next day, the wild river, in its capricious
wanderings, led them through a variety of striking scenes. At one
time they were upon high plains, like platforms among the
mountains, with herds of buffaloes roaming about them; at another
among rude rocky defiles, broken into cliffs and precipices,
where the blacktailed deer bounded off among the crags, and the
bighorn basked in the sunny brow of the precipice.
In the after part of the day, they came to another scene,
surpassing in savage grandeur those already described. They had
been travelling for some distance through a pass of the
mountains, keeping parallel with the river, as it roared along,
out of sight, through a deep ravine. Sometimes their devious path
approached the margin of cliffs below which the river foamed, and
boiled, and whirled among the masses of rock that had fallen into
its channel. As they crept cautiously on, leading their solitary
pack-horse along these giddy heights, they all at once came to
where the river thundered down a succession of precipices,
throwing up clouds of spray, and making a prodigious din and
uproar. The travellers remained, for a time, gazing with mingled
awe and delight, at this furious cataract, to which Mr. Stuart
gave, from the color of the impending rocks, the name of "The
Fiery Narrows."
CHAPTER XLIX.
Wintry Storms.- A Halt and Council.- Cantonment for the Winter. -
Fine Hunting Country.- Game of the Mountains and Plains.-
Successful Hunting- Mr. Crooks and a Grizzly Bear.- The Wigwam.
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