The Prospect Of Abundance Of Horse Flesh
Diffused Universal Joy, For By This Time The Whole Stock Of
Travelling Provisions Was Reduced To The Skeleton Steed Of Pierre
Dorion, And Another Wretched Animal, Equally Emaciated, That Had
Been Repeatedly Reprieved During The Journey.
A forced march soon brought the weary and hungry travellers to
the camp.
It proved to be a strong party of Sciatogas and Tusche-
pas. There were thirty-four lodges, comfortably constructed of
mats; the Indians, too, were better clothed than any of the
wandering bands they had hitherto met on this side of the Rocky
Mountains. Indeed, they were as well clad as the generality of
the wild hunter tribes. Each had a good buffalo or deer skin
robe; and a deer skin hunting shirt and leggins. Upwards of two
thousand horses were ranging the pastures around their
encampment; but what delighted Mr. Hunt was, on entering the
lodges, to behold brass kettles, axes, copper tea-kettles, and
various other articles of civilized manufacture, which showed
that these Indians had an indirect communication with the people
of the sea-coast who traded with the whites. He made eager
inquiries of the Sciatogas, and gathered from them that the great
river (the Columbia) was but two days' march distant, and that
several white people had recently descended it; who he hoped
might prove to be M'Lellan, M'Kenzie, and their companions.
It was with the utmost joy and the most profound gratitude to
heaven, that Mr. Hunt found himself and his band of weary and
famishing wanderers thus safely extricated from the most perilous
part of their long journey, and within the prospect of a
termination of their tolls.
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