The Indians Were Overjoyed When They Found This
Band Of White Men Intended To Return And Trade With Them.
They
promised to use all diligence in collecting quantities of beaver
skins, and no doubt proceeded to make deadly war upon that
sagacious, but ill-fated animal, who, in general, lived in
peaceful insignificance among his Indian neighbors, before the
intrusion of the white trader.
On the 20th of January, Mr. Hunt
took leave of these friendly Indians, and of the river on which
they encamped, and continued westward.
At length, on the following day, the wayworn travellers lifted up
their eyes and beheld before them the long-sought waters of the
Columbia. The sight was hailed with as much transport as if they
had already reached the end of their pilgrimage; nor can we
wonder at their joy. Two hundred and forty miles had they
marched, through wintry wastes and rugged mountains, since
leaving Snake River; and six months of perilous wayfaring had
they experienced since their departure from the Arickara village
on the Missouri. Their whole route by land and water from that
point had been, according to their computation, seventeen hundred
and fifty-one miles, in the course of which they had endured all
kinds of hardships. In fact, the necessity of avoiding the
dangerous country of the Blackfeet had obliged them to make a
bend to the south and traverse a great additional extent of
unknown wilderness.
The place where they struck the Columbia was some distance below
the junction of its two great branches, Lewis and Clarke rivers,
and not far from the influx of the Wallah-Wallah.
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