Part 13 (1/2)

They were now advancing diagonally upon the chain of Wind River Mountains, which lay between them and Green River valley To coast round their southern points would be a wide circuit; whereas, could they force their way through theht line The ed sides; it was hoped, however, that soht be found They atte up one of the branches of the Popo Agie, but soon found thes and precipices that barred all progress Retracing their steps, and falling back upon the river, they consulted where to make another atteenerally, but they now recollected having noticed, frole of about thirty degrees, and apparently without any break, until it reached the snowy region Seeking this gentle acclivity, they began to ascend it with alacrity, trusting to find at the top one of those elevated plains which prevail a the Rocky Mountains The slope was covered with coarse gravel, interspersed with plates of freestone They attained the summit with so plain, that they were on the brink of a deep and precipitous ravine, from the bottom of which rose a second slope, similar to the one they had just ascended Down into this profound ravine they ed path, or rather fissure of the rocks, and then labored up the second slope They gained the summit only to find themselves on another ravine, and now perceived that this vastand even side to the distant beholder on the plain, was shagged by frightful precipices, and seaerous

In one of these wild dells they passed the night, and slept soundly and sweetly after their fatigues Two daysonly served to admit them into the heart of this mountainous and awful solitude; where difficulties increased as they proceeded

Sometimes they scrambled from rock to rock, up the bed of soht way down to the plains; sometimes they availed themselves of the paths made by the deer and the mountain sheep, which, however, often took theed defiles, ied to slide their horses down the face of a rock, in which atte, rolled to the botto dashed to pieces

In the afternoon of the second day, the travellers attained one of the elevated valleys locked up in this singular bed of ht and beautiful little lakes, set like hts, and surrounded by grassyto the eye These probably were ahty strea these h the plains

In the green pastures bordering upon these lakes, the travellers halted to repose, and to give their weary horses tie They had now ascended to a great height above the level of the plains, yet they beheld huge crags of granite piled one upon another, and beetling like battlements far above them While two of the men remained in the camp with the horses, Captain Bonneville, acco height, hoping to gain a coh this stupendous labyrinth After much toil, he reached the suantic peaks rising all around, and towering far into the snowy regions of the athest, he crossed a narrow intervening valley, and began to scale it He soon found that he had undertaken a tremendous task; but the pride ofed that he and his coed to cla upon their backs Frequently, exhausted with fatigue, and dripping with perspiration, they threw themselves upon the snow, and took handfuls of it to allay their parching thirst At one place, they even stripped off their coats and hung thehtly clad, proceeded to scraher, there were cool breezes that refreshed and braced theth attained the summit

Here a scene burst upon the view of Captain Bonneville, that for a time astonished and overwhelmed hi ridge which Indians regard as the crest of the world; and on each side of which, the landscape lobe Whichever way he turned his eye, it was confounded by the vastness and variety of objects Beneath him, the Rocky Mountains seemed to open all their secret recesses: deep, soleed defiles, and foae precincts, the eye was lost in an al on every side into dim and hazy distance, like the expanse of a suli on their shi+ning course toward either ocean, and snowy mountains, chain beyond chain, and peak beyond peak, till they melted like clouds into the horizon For a time, the Indian fable seeht from which the Blackfoot warrior, after death, first catches a view of the land of souls, and beholds the happy hunting grounds spread out below hienerous spirits The captain stood for a long while gazing upon this scene, lost in a crowd of vague and indefinite ideas and sensations A long-drawn inspiration at length relieved hian to analyze the parts of this vast panoraive sonificence

The peak on which the captain had taken his stand commanded the whole Wind River chain; which, in fact, may rather be considered one immense mountain, broken into snowy peaks and lateral spurs, and sealittered with silver lakes and gushi+ng streahty tributaries to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans Beyond the snowy peaks, to the south, and far, far below the entle river, called the Sweet Water, was seen pursuing its tranquil way through the rugged regions of the Black Hills In the east, the head waters of Wind River wandered through a plain, until, h the range of Horn Mountains, and were lost to view To the north were caught glireat tributary of the Missouri In another direction were to be seen so to the northwest, past those towering landreat lava plain; while, almost at the captain's feet, the Green River, or Colorado of the West, set forth on its wandering pilgrie to the Gulf of California; at first aand precipice, in a succession of cascades, and tu into an ample river, it circled away to the south, and after alternately shi+ning out and disappearing in the mazes of the vast landscape, was finally lost in a horizon of mountains The day was calm and cloudless, and the atmosphere so pure that objects were discernible at an astonishi+ng distance The whole of this ie of shadowy peaks, some of them faintly marked on the horizon, which seemed to wall it in froretted that Captain Bonneville had no instruments with hiives it as his opinion that it is the loftiest point of the North American continent; but of this we have no satisfactory proof It is certain that the Rocky Mountains are of an altitude vastly superior to as forhest peak is further to the northward, and is the same measured by Mr

Thompson, surveyor to the Northwest Coonometric measurement, ascertained it to be twenty-five thousand feet above the level of the sea; an elevation only inferior to that of the Hiazing around hith the chill and wintry winds, whirling about the snow-clad height, adained the spot where he and his companions [coladly resu their course down the peak, they safely rejoined their co the savage and almost inaccessible nature of these mountains, they have their inhabitants As one of the party was out hunting, he came upon the solitary track of ait up, he reached the brow of a cliff, whence he beheld three savages running across the valley below hi to induce them to turn back They only fled the faster, and disappeared a the rocks The hunter returned and reported what he had seen Captain Bonneville at once concluded that these belonged to a kind of herhest and e, and probably are offsets froh they have peculiarities of their ohich distinguish them from all other Indians They are miserably poor; own no horses, and are destitute of every convenience to be derived from an intercourse with the whites

Their weapons are bows and stone-pointed arrohich they hunt the deer, the elk, and the mountain sheep They are to be found scattered about the countries of the Shoshonie, Flathead, Crow, and Blackfeet tribes; but their residences are always in lonely places, and the clefts of the rocks

Their footsteps are often seen by the trappers in the high and solitary valleys a thethe precipices, but they theht to a parley, so great is their shyness, and their dread of strangers

As their poverty offers no temptation to the marauder, and as they are inoffensive in their habits, they are never the objects of warfare: should one of them, however, fall into the hands of a war party, he is sure to be e trophy, a scalp, and that barbarous cere a mere link between human nature and the brute, have been looked down upon with pity and conteiven thenes de pitie,” or ”the objects of pity”; They appear more worthy to be called the wild ade move Channel of a mountain torrent--Alpine scenery--Cascades--Beaver valleys--Beavers at work--Their architecture--Theirbeaver--Contests of skill--A beaver ”up to trap”--Arrival at the Green River caches

THE VIEW from the snowy peak of the Wind River Mountains, while it had excited Captain Bonneville's enthusiasm, had satisfied hie ard, throughhis face eastward, therefore, he endeavored to regain the plains, intending to make the circuit round the southern point of the mountain To descend, and to extricate himself from the heart of this rock-piled wilderness, was al his course down the ravine of a tu stream, the commencement of some future river, he descended from rock to rock, and shelf to shelf, between stupendous cliffs and beetling crags that sprang up to the sky Often he had to cross and recross the rushi+ng torrent, as it wound foa down its broken channel, or alled by perpendicular precipices; and is of the horses in the clefts and fissures of slippery rocks The whole scenery of this deep ravine was of Alpine wildness and sublimity Sometimes the travellers passed beneath cascades which pitched frohts that the water fell into the strea fro tremendous din and uproar

On the second day of their descent, the travellers, having got beyond the steepest pitch of the an occasionally to expand into small levels or valleys, and the stream to assume for short intervals a more peaceful character

Here, notinto it, was dammed up by cohborhood, anda mid-day halt in one of these beaver valleys, Captain Bonneville left his companions, and strolled down the course of the stream to reconnoitre He had not proceeded far when he cali inhabitants busily at work upon the dam The curiosity of the captain was aroused, to behold theof this far-famed architect; hethe branches of the water ithouta view of the whole pond, he stretched hiround, and watched the solitary workman In a little while, three others appeared at the head of the da sticks and bushes With these they proceeded directly to the barrier, which Captain Bonneville perceived was in need of repair Having deposited their loads upon the broken part, they dived into the water, and shortly reappeared at the surface Each now brought a quantity of mud, hich he would plaster the sticks and bushes just deposited This kind of masonry was continued for soht, and treated in the saed in a little recreation, chasing each other about the pond, dodging and whisking about on the surface, or diving to the botto their tails on the water with a loud clacking sound While they were thus a themselves, another of the fraternity ravely on their sports for so to join in them He then climbed the bank close to where the captain was concealed, and, rearing hi position, put his forepaws against a young pine tree, and began to cut the bark with his teeth At ti it between his paws, and retaining his sedentary position, would feed himself with it, after the fashi+on of a monkey The object of the beaver, however, was evidently to cut down the tree; and he was proceeding with his work, when he was alar anxious at the protracted absence of their leader, were co in search of him At the sound of their voices, all the beavers, busy as well as idle, dived at once beneath the surface, and were no retted this interruption He had hearddown trees, in which, it is said, they e to make them fall into the water, and in such a position and direction as may be most favorable for conveyance to the desired point

In the present instance, the tree was a tall straight pine, and as it grew perpendicularly, and there was not a breath of air stirring the beaver could have felled it in any direction he pleased, if really capable of exercising a discretion in the ” the tree, and his first incision had been on the side nearest to the water

Captain Bonneville, however, discredits, on the whole, the alleged sagacity of the beaver in this particular, and thinks the aniet the tree doithout any of the subtle calculation as to itsThis attribute, he thinks, has been ascribed to the near water-courses, either lean bodily toward the streaest liht, and the air to be found there The beaver, of course, attacks those trees which are nearest at hand, and on the banks of the stream or pond He makes incisions round them, or in technical phrase, belts them with his teeth, and when they fall, they naturally take the direction in which their trunks or branches preponderate

”I have often,” says Captain Bonneville, ”seen trees hteen inches in diah by the beaver, but they lay in all directions, and often very inconveniently for the after purposes of the anienuity do they at times display in this particular, that at one of our caed into the cut which he hadfallen upon him and held hi to the captain, is certainly displayed by the beaver in selecting the hich is to furnish bark for winter provision The whole beaver household, old and young, set out upon this business, and will oftenjourneys before they are suited

Soest size and then cull the branches, the bark of which is ths of about three feet, convey thees, where they are stored away for winter They are studious of cleanliness and coes, and after their repasts, will carry out the sticks from which they have eaten the bark, and throw them into the current beyond the barrier They are jealous, too, of their territories, and extree beaver to enter their pre with such virulence as al, which is the breeding season, the male leaves the fe often to a great distance, recreating himself in every clear and quiet expanse of water on his way, and cli the banks occasionally to feast upon the tender sprouts of the young s As suives up his bachelor ra duties, returns hoeny, andexpedition in quest of winter provisions

After having shown the public spirit of this praiseworthy little animal as a member of a community, and his arieve to record the perils hich he is environed, and the snares set for hi household

Practice, says Captain Bonneville, has given such a quickness of eye to the experienced trapper in all that relates to his pursuit, that he can detect the slightest sign of beaver, however wild; and although the lodges, he can generally, at a single glance, oes to work to set his trap; planting it upon the shore, in some chosen place, two or three inches below the surface of the water, and secures it by a chain to a pole set deep in theis then stripped of its bark, and one end is dipped in the ”medicine,” as the trappers term the peculiar bait which they employ