The Largest Of These Forks Came From The Range Of Wind
River Mountains.
The hunters who served as guides to the party in this part of
their route, had assured Mr. Hunt that, by following up Wind
River, and crossing a single mountain ridge, he would come upon
the head waters of the Columbia.
This scarcity of game, however,
which already had been felt to a pinching degree, and which
threatened them with famine among the sterile heights which lay
before them, admonished them to change their course. It was
determined, therefore, to make for a stream, which they were
informed passed the neighboring mountains, to the south of west,
on the grassy banks of which it was probable they would meet with
buffalo. Accordingly, about three o'clock on the following day,
meeting with a beaten Indian road which led in the proper
direction, they struck into it, turning their backs upon Wind
River.
In the course of the day, they came to a height that commanded an
almost boundless prospect. Here one of the guides paused, and,
after considering the vast landscape attentively, pointed to
three mountain peaks glistening with snow, which rose, he said,
above a fork of Columbia River. They were hailed by the
travellers with that joy with which a beacon on a seashore is
hailed by mariners after a long and dangerous voyage.
It is true there was many a weary league to be traversed before
they should reach these landmarks, for, allowing for their
evident height and the extreme transparency of the atmosphere,
they could not be much less than a hundred miles distant.
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