When Day Was Sufficiently Recovered To Travel, They Kept Feebly
On, Sustaining Themselves As Well As They Could, Until In
The
month of February, when three of the Canadians, fearful of
perishing with want, left Mr. Crooks on a small
River, on the
road by which Mr Hunt had passed in quest of Indians. Mr. Crooks
followed Mr. Hunt's track in the snow for several days, sleeping
as usual in the open air, and suffering all kinds of hardships.
At length, coming to a low prairie, he lost every appearance Of
the "trail," and wandered during the remainder of the winter in
the mountains, subsisting sometimes on horse meat, sometimes on
beavers and their skins, and a part of the time on roots.
About the last of March, the other Canadian gave out and was left
with a lodge of Shoshonies; but Mr. Crooks and John Day still
kept on, and finding the snow sufficiently diminished, undertook,
from Indian information, to cross the last mountain ridge. They
happily succeeded, and afterwards fell in with the Wallah-
Wallahs, a tribe of Indians inhabiting the banks of a river of
the same name, and reputed as being frank, hospitable, and
sincere. They proved worthy of the character, for they received
the poor wanderers kindly, killed a horse for them to eat, and
directed them on their way to the Columbia. They struck the river
about the middle of April, and advanced down it one hundred
miles, until they came within about twenty miles of the falls.
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