During The Last Three Days Of Their Fortnight's Travel, However,
The Face Of The Country Changed.
The timber gradually diminished,
until they could scarcely find fuel sufficient for culinary
purposes.
The game grew more and more scanty, and, finally, none
were to be seen but a few miserable broken-down buffalo bulls,
not worth killing. The snow lay fifteen inches deep, and made the
travelling grievously painful and toilsome. At length they came
to an immense plain, where no vestige of timber was to be seen;
nor a single quadruped to enliven the desolate landscape. Here,
then, their hearts failed them, and they held another
consultation. The width of the river, which was upwards of a
mile, its extreme shallowness, the frequency of quicksands, and
various other characteristics, had at length made them sensible
of their errors with respect to it, and they now came to the
correct conclusion, that they were on the banks of the Platte or
Shallow River. What were they to do? Pursue its course to the
Missouri? To go on at this season of the year seemed dangerous in
the extreme. There was no prospect of obtaining either food or
firing. The country was destitute of trees, and though there
might be drift-wood along the river, it lay too deep beneath the
snow for them to find it.
The weather was threatening a change, and a snowstorm on these
boundless wastes might prove as fatal as a whirlwind of sand on
an Arabian desert.
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