As
Landmarks They Guided Themselves By The Summits Of The Far
Distant Mountains, Which They Supposed To Belong To The Bighorn
Chain.
They were gradually rising into a higher temperature, for
the weather was cold for the season, with a sharp frost in the
night, and ice of an eighth of an inch in thickness.
On the twenty-second of August, early in the day, they came upon
the trail of a numerous band. Rose and the other hunters examined
the foot-prints with great attention, and determined it to be the
trail of a party of Crows, returning from an annual trading visit
to the Mandans. As this trail afforded more commodious
travelling, they immediately struck into it, and followed it for
two days. It led them over rough hills, and through broken
gullies, during which time they suffered great fatigue from the
ruggedness of the country. The weather, too, which had recently
been frosty, was now oppressively warm, and there was a great
scarcity of water, insomuch that a valuable dog belonging to Mr.
M'Kenzie died of thirst.
At one time they had twenty-five miles of painful travel, without
a drop of water, until they arrived at a small running stream.
Here they eagerly slaked their thirst; but, this being allayed,
the calls of hunger became equally importunate. Ever since they
had got among these barren and arid hills where there was a
deficiency of grass, they had met with no buffaloes; those
animals keeping in the grassy meadows near the streams. They were
obliged, therefore, to have recourse to their corn meal, which
they reserved for such emergencies. Some, however, were lucky
enough to kill a wolf, which they cooked for supper, and
pronounced excellent food.
The next morning they resumed their wayfaring, hungry and jaded,
and had a dogged march of eighteen miles among the same kind of
hills. At length they emerged upon a stream of clear water, one
of the forks of Powder River, and to their great joy beheld once
more wide grassy meadows, stocked with herds of buffalo. For
several days they kept along the banks of the river, ascending it
about eighteen miles. It was a hunter's paradise; the buffaloes
were in such abundance that they were enabled to kill as many as
they pleased, and to jerk a sufficient supply of meat for several
days' journeying. Here, then, they reveled and reposed after
their hungry and weary travel, hunting and feasting, and
reclining upon the grass. Their quiet, however, was a little
marred by coming upon traces of Indians, who, they concluded,
must be Crows: they were therefore obliged to keep a more
vigilant watch than ever upon their horses. For several days they
had been directing their march towards the lofty mountain
descried by Mr. Hunt and Mr. M'Kenzie on the 17th of August, the
height of which rendered it a landmark over a vast extent of
country. At first it had appeared to them solitary and detached;
but as they advanced towards it, it proved to be the principal
summit of a chain of mountains. Day by day it varied in form, or
rather its lower peaks, and the summits of others of the chain
emerged above the clear horizon, and finally the inferior line of
hills which connected most of them rose to view. So far, however,
are objects discernible in the pure atmosphere of these elevated
plains, that, from the place where they first descried the main
mountain, they had to travel a hundred and fifty miles before
they reached its base. Here they encamped on the 30th of August,
having come nearly four hundred miles since leaving the Arickara
village.
The mountain which now towered above them was one of the Bighorn
chain, bordered by a river, of the same name, and extending for a
long distance rather east of north and west of south. It was a
part of the great system of granite mountains which forms one of
the most important and striking features of North America,
stretching parallel to the coast of the Pacific from the Isthmus
of Panama almost to the Arctic Ocean; and presenting a
corresponding chain to that of the Andes in the southern
hemisphere. This vast range has acquired, from its rugged and
broken character and its summits of naked granite, the
appellation of the Rocky Mountains, a name by no means
distinctive, as all elevated ranges are rocky. Among the early
explorers it was known as the range of Chippewyan Mountains, and
this Indian name is the one it is likely to retain in poetic
usage. Rising from the midst of vast plains and prairies,
traversing several degrees of latitude, dividing the waters of
the Atlantic and the Pacific, and seeming to bind with diverging
ridges the level regions on its flanks, it has been figuratively
termed the backbone of the northern continent.
The Rocky Mountains do not present a range of uniform elevation,
but rather groups and occasionally detached peaks. Though some of
these rise to the region of perpetual snows, and are upwards of
eleven thousand feet in real altitude, yet their height from
their immediate basis is not so great as might be imagined, as
they swell up from elevated plains, several thousand feet above
the level of the ocean. These plains are often of a desolate
sterility; mere sandy wastes, formed of the detritus of the
granite heights, destitute of trees and herbage, scorched by the
ardent and reflected rays of the summer's sun, and in winter
swept by chilling blasts from the snow-clad mountains. Such is a
great part of that vast region extending north and south along
the mountains, several hundred miles in width, which has not
improperly been termed the Great American Desert. It is a region
that almost discourages all hope of cultivation, and can only be
traversed with safety by keeping near the streams which intersect
it. Extensive plains likewise occur among the higher regions of
the mountains, of considerable fertility.
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