Kitabı oku: «Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., May 21-October 16, 1839, part 1», sayfa 16

CHAPTER VII [II]

An Arrival from Fort Hall – An Account from Oregon – Return of two of my companions to the States – A startling Condition – An Indian Guide – A Farewell – How a Horse studies Geology – A Camp – Dog Mutton superseded – A Scene – Sheetskadee – Butes – Desolation – Midnight Scene in the Mountains – Indian Jim and the Buffalo – Hungry Stomachs – A fat Shot – Fine Eyesight – An old Trapper picked up – Beautiful Desert – "Hos, Hos" – Meek the Bear Killer – A wild Vale – Steamboat Spring – Natural Soda Fountains – Neighbouring Landscape – A hard Drive – Valley of Chasm – Nature's Vase – A heavy March – Passing the Mountains – A charming Gorge – Entrance into Oregon – The South Branch of the Columbia – Fort Hall and its Hospitalities.

17th. An event of great interest occurred this day. It was the arrival of Paul Richardson and three of his companions from Fort Hall. This old Yankee woodsman had been upon one of his favourite summer trips from St. Louis to the borders of Oregon. He had acted as guide and hunter to a party of missionaries to the Oregon Indians. Several other persons from the western states had accompanied them: one with the lofty intention of conquering California; and others with the intention of trading, farming, &c., on the lower Columbia; and others to explore the Rocky Mountains, and the wonders of nature along the shores of the Pacific.¹⁶⁴ The events of their tour were freely discussed. They had storms of hail and human wrath. The conqueror of California had been disposed to act the general before he had received his epaulettes; had proved to be so troublesome that he was expelled from camp a short distance from the frontier, and obliged to ride, sleep, and eat, at a comfortable distance from his companions, during the remainder of the journey.

The missionaries, too, Messrs. Monger and Griffith,¹⁶⁵ and their ladies, had had causes of irritability; so that between all the conflicting feelings and opinions of the party, their little camp, it was said, was frequently full of trouble. Oregon also came under discussion. Mr. Richardson had travelled over the territory; knew it well; it was not so productive as New England; fifteen bushels of wheat to the acre was an extraordinary crop; corn and potatoes did not yield the seed planted; rain fell incessantly five months of the year; the remainder was unblessed even with dew; the Indians and whites residing there had the fever and ague, or bilious fever, the year through; that what little of human life was left by these causes of destruction, was consumed by musquitoes and fleas; that the Columbia river was unfit for navigation – fit only for an Indian fish-pond. Such a description of Oregon (the part of the American domain represented by traders, trappers, and travellers, as most delightful, beautiful, and productive) was astonishing, unlooked-for, and discouraging. And did I not recollect that Mr. Richardson had reasons for desiring to increase the strength of his party through the dangerous plains towards the States, I should, after having seen Oregon, be at a loss to divine the purpose of such a representation of it.

18th. Mr. Richardson's description of Oregon had the effect of drawing off two of my companions. They had no evidence to oppose to his account; he had resided two years in the Territory, and on the knowledge acquired by that means, had represented it to be in no sense a desirable place of abode. They therefore forsook the chase after a desert, and joined him for the green glades of the valley States. On the morning of the 18th, they left me. It was the most disheartening event which had befallen me on the journey. Oakley and Wood had stood by me in the trials and storms of the plains; had evinced a firmness of purpose equal to every emergency that had occurred, were men on whom reliance could be placed; humane men, always ready to do their duty promptly and cheerfully. It was painful therefore to part with them at a time when their services were most needed. Alone in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, a traveller through the range of the Blackfeet war parties, in bad health, no men save poor old Blair, and the worse than useless vagabond Smith, alias Carroll, to aid me in resisting these savages: I felt alone.

I was indeed kindly offered quarters for the winter at Brown's Hole; but if I accepted them, I should find it impossible to return to the States the next year. I determined therefore to reach the Columbia river that season, be the risk and manner what it might. Accordingly I engaged a Snake Indian, whom the whites called "Jim," to pilot me to Fort Hall, the march to commence on the morning of the 19th – distance two hundred miles, compensation fifty loads of ammunition, and three bunches of beads.

There is in this valley, and in some other parts of the mountains, a fruit called bulberry.¹⁶⁶ It is the most delightful acid in the vegetable kingdom; of the size of the common red currant, with larger seeds than are found in that fruit; colour deep red. It grows upon bushes eight or ten feet high, which in general appearance resemble a young beech tree. Of these berries I obtained a small quantity, had a dog butchered, took a pound or two of dried buffalo meat which Mr. St. Clair kindly gave me, purchased a horse of Mr. Robinson for the use of Blair, and on the morning of the 19th of August left the hospitalities of Fort David Crockett for the dreary waste and starving plains between it and Fort Hall. Blair, Smith, and my guide Jim, constituted my whole force. Numerous war-parties of Blackfeet and Sioux were hovering over my trail. If discovered by them, death was certain; if not, and starvation did not assail us, we might reach the waters of Snake river. At all events the trial was to be made; and at ten o'clock, A. M., we were winding our way up the Sheetskadee.

Of the regrets at leaving this beautiful little valley, there was no one that I remember more vividly than that of parting with my old guide. Kelly was a man of many excellent qualities. He was brave without ostentation, kind without making you feel an obligation; and preferred on all occasions the happiness of others to his own ease or safety. The river during the twelve miles' travel of the day, appeared to be about one hundred yards wide, a rapid current two feet deep, water limpid. The mountains on either side rose half a mile from the river in dark stratified masses, one thousand feet above the level of the stream. On their sides were a few shrub cedars. The lower hills were covered with the hated wild wormwood and prickly pear. The banks were of white clay, alternated with the loose light coloured sandy soil of the mountain districts. The rocks were quartz, red sand-stone, and limestone. Our camp was pitched at night on the high bank of the stream among the bushes; and a supper of stewed dog-meat prepared us for sleep.

20th. At seven o'clock in the morning we had breakfasted and were on our way. We travelled three miles up the east bank of the river, and came to a mountain, through which it broke its way with a noise which indicated the fall to be great, and the channel to be a deep rugged chasm.¹⁶⁷ Near the place where it leaves the chasm, we turned to the right, and followed up a rough, deep gorge, the distance of five miles, and emerged into a plain. This gorge had been formed by the action of a tributary of Green River, upon the soft red sand-stone that formed the precipices around. It winds in the distance of five miles to every point of the compass. Along much of its course also the cliffs hang over the stream in such a manner as to render it impossible to travel the water-side. Hence the necessity, in ascending the gorge, of clambering over immense precipices, along brinks of yawning caverns, on paths twelve or fourteen inches in width, with not a bush to cling to in the event of a false step. And yet our Indian horses were so well used to passes of the kind, that they travelled them without fear or accident till the worst were behind us.

How delusive the past as a test of the future! I was felicitating myself upon our good fortune, as the caravan wound its way slowly over a sharp cliff before me, when the shout from the men in advance, "Well done, Puebla," made me hasten to the top of the ridge. My Puebla mare had left the track. Instead of following a wide, well-beaten way down the mountain, she in her wisdom had chosen to tread the shelf of a cliff, which, wide at the place where it sprang from the pathway, gradually became narrower, till it was lost in the perpendicular face of the mountain. She was under a high bulky back at the time, and before she had quite explored the nethermost inch of the interesting stratum which she was disposed to trace to its lowest dip, the centre of gravity was suddenly thrown without the base, and over she reeled, and fell ten or twelve feet among broken rocks, then rolled and tumbled six hundred feet more of short perpendicular descents and inclined plains, into the stream below. On descending and examining her, I found her horribly mangled, the blood running from the nostrils, ears, and other parts of the body. As it was apparent she would soon die, I stripped her of her packs and gear, drove her to a plat of grass where she could find food, should she need it, and left her to her fate.

This accident being disposed of, we emerged from this gorge, travelled over barren gravelly plains, dotted with pyramidal hills of the same material, whose sides were belted with strata of coarse grey sand-stone. About four o'clock P. M., Jim halted beside a little brook, and pointing ahead, said, "Wat, ugh, u – gh;" by which I understood that the next water on our way was too far distant to be reached that night; and we encamped. The scenery to the west was very beautiful. A hundred rods from our camp, in that direction, rose an apparently perfect pyramid of regular stratified black rocks, about six hundred feet in height, with a basilar diameter of about eight hundred feet, and partially covered with bushes. Beyond it, some five hundred yards, crept away a circling ridge of the same kind of rocks, leaving a beautiful lawn between. And still beyond, sixty miles to the south-west, through a break in the hills that lay in clusters over the intervening country, a portion of the Anahuac range was seen, sweeping away in the direction of the Great Salt Lake.

Jim had turned his horse loose as soon as he saw we were disposed to encamp according to his wishes, and was away with his rifle to the hills. In an instant he was on their heights, creeping stealthily among the bushes and rocks; and the crack of his rifle, and the tumbling of some kind of game over the cliffs, immediately succeeded. More nimble and sure of step than the mountain goat, he sprang down again from cliff to cliff, reached the plain, and the next moment was in camp, crying "hos, ugh, yes." I sent my horse and brought in his game; a noble buck antelope, of about forty pounds weight. In consequence of this windfall, our dog meat was thrown among the willows for the behoof of the wolves. My guide, poor fellow, had eaten nothing since we left the Fort. His tribe have a superstition of some kind which forbids them the use of such meat. A dog-eater is a term of reproach among them. If one of their number incurs the displeasure of another, he is called "Arrapahoe," the name of the tribe previously described, who fatten these animals for some great annual feast. Jim's creed, however, raised no objections to the flesh of the antelope. He ate enormously, washed himself neatly, combed his long dark hair, pulled out his beard with his right thumb and left forefinger nails, and "turned in."

21st. Twenty miles to-day. The ride of the forenoon was over plains and hills of coarse gravel, destitute of grass, timber, or brush, the everywhere present wild wormwood excepted; that of the afternoon was among broken hills, alternately of gravel and brown sand, here and there dotted with a tuft of bunch grass. From some few of the hills protruded strata of beautiful slate. The bottom lands of the river, even, were as barren as Sahara. The only living things seen, were the small prairie wolf, and flocks of magpie. This bird inhabits the most dreary portions of the mountains, and seems to delight in making the parched and silent deserts more lonely by its ominous croak of welcome to its desolate habitation.

The raven indeed was about us, throwing his funeral wing upon the light of the setting sun. In fine, to-day, as often before, I found nothing in nature from which to derive a single pulse of pleasure, save the vastness of desolate wastes, the tombs of the washing of the flood! Towards night, however, we were gratified by finding a few decrepid old cotton-wood trees, on the bank of the Sheetskadee, among which to encamp. Our horses having had little food for the last forty-eight hours, devoured with eager appetite the dry grass along the banks. Since leaving Brown's Hole, our course had been nearly due north.

22nd. Travelled up Green River about three miles, crossed it three times, and took to the hills on its western side. The course of the river, as far as seen in this valley, is nearly south; the bottom and banks generally of gravel; the face of the country a dry, barren, undulating plain.¹⁶⁸ Our course, after leaving the river, was north-west by north. About two o'clock, we struck Ham's Fork, a tributary of Green River, and encamped near the water-side.¹⁶⁹ This stream probably pours down immense bodies of water when the snow melts upon the neighbouring highlands; for its channel, at the place where we struck it, was half a mile in width, and two hundred feet deep. Very little water is said to run in it during July, August and September. The current was three or four inches in depth, a rod wide, and sluggish. Three butes appeared in the north-east, about twelve o'clock, fifteen miles distant. One of them resembled a vast church, surmounted by a perpendicular shaft of rock, probably three hundred feet in height. The swelling base resembled in colour the sands of this region. The rock shaft was dark, probably basalt.

By the side of this, springing immediately from the plain, rose another shaft of rock, about one hundred and fifty feet high, of regular outline, and about fifteen feet in diameter. Seven or eight miles to the north, rose another bute, a perpendicular shaft, fifty or sixty feet in height, resting upon a base of hills which rise about three hundred feet above the plain. Beyond these butes, to the east, the country seemed to be an open plain. To the south of them extends a range of dark mountains, reaching far into the dimly-discerned neighbourhood of Long's Peak.¹⁷⁰ The whole circle of vision presented no other means of life for man or beast than a few small patches of dry grass, and the water of the stream. Many of the sandy bluffs were covered with the prickly pear and wild wormwood. Generally, however, nothing green, nothing but the burnt, unproductive waste appeared, which no art of man can reclaim. Yet far in the north, the snowy peaks of Wind River Mountains, and to the south-west, a portion of the Anahuac ridge indicated that it might be possible to find along the borders of this great grave of vegetation, green vales and purling brooks to alleviate the desolation of the scene.

We travelled fifteen miles to-day, and encamped upon the bank of the stream; cooked supper, and wrapping ourselves in our blankets, with saddles for pillows, and curtained by the starry firmament, slept sweetly among the overhanging willows. Near midnight, the light of the moon aroused me. It was a lovely night. The stars seemed smaller than they do in less elevated situations, but not less beautiful. For, although they are not so brilliant, they burn steadily, brightly on the hours of night in these magnificent wastes. It was midnight. The wolves are correct time-keepers.

I had scarcely viewed the delightful scene around me, when these sleepless sentinels of the deserts raised their midnight howl. It rung along the chambers of the mountains, was, at intervals, taken up by kennel after kennel, till, in the deep and distant vales, it yielded again to the all-pervading silence of night. This is one of the habits that instinct has taught their race. As soon as the first light of morning appears in the east, they raise a reveille howl in the prairies of the Western States which, keeping company with the hours, swells along the vast plains from Texas to the sources of the Mississippi, and from Missouri to the depths of the Rocky Mountains. All day they lurk in silence. At midnight, another howl awakens the sleeping wilderness – more horrible and prolonged; and it is remarkable with what exactness they hit the hour.

23rd. We were up this morning before the light; and while the sun rose in the Great Gap, mounted our jaded horses for the day's ride. As we moved onward upon the elevated bluffs which border the river, the light of the morning showed the butes clearly on the eastern horizon. Jim paid little regard to the course of the stream to-day; but struck a bee line for some object, unseen by us, across the hills – at times among wild wormwood, at others among sharp, flinty stones, so thickly laid over the ground that none but an Indian horse would travel over them. We occasionally approached the stream, and were gratified with the appearance of a few solitary old cotton-wood trees on its banks. A poor, stinted shrub willow, too, made great effort here and there to prolong existence, but with little success. Even in one little nook, the wild rose, currant, and bulberry bushes had the effrontery to bear leaves.

About four o'clock, P. M., small patches of dry grass were seen in the ravines. On one of these were five buffalo; but they proved to us more delightful to the sight than to any other sense, since I was unable to induce my guide to halt and hunt them. This apparently unpardonable stubbornness was afterward explained. He had the only animal which could run fast enough to approach them – he alone could ride him – and having lost his right thumb, protested that he could not discharge his piece from a running horse. But having no interpreter with us to render his furious protestations intelligible, I attributed his unwillingness to lay in a supply of good meat here to mere malicious indifference. At five o'clock, we came upon a plat of excellent grass, around a clump of yellow pines. Near this, weary and hungry, we made our camp for the night; ate the half of the meat in our possession – a mere mite – and gorged ourselves with wild currants, which grew plentifully among the pines, until the darkness bade us cease. Course as yesterday: the butes out of sight during the afternoon. We supposed we had travelled twenty miles; weather exceedingly warm.

24th. Rode on a fast trot till about three o'clock, P. M., made about twenty-five miles. Our route lay over sandy and gravelly swells, and the bottom lands of Ham's Fork; the latter, like the former, were well nigh destitute of vegetation.¹⁷¹ When about to encamp, we had the excellent fortune to espy an antelope on a bluff hard by. He fell before the well levelled rifle of our one-thumbed guide. A fat one he was too; just such an one as the imaginations of our hungry stomachs had all the day been figuring to themselves would afford a pleasant variety in the matter of starvation. The circle of vision, the last day or two, had been very much circumscribed by the increasing size of the undulating bluffs, among which our way usually ran. And from their tops, whenever we chanced to go over them, neither the Wind River Mountains nor the Anahuac range were visible. In all directions, to the limit of sight, rolled away the dead, leafless, thirsty swells. Wolves and ravens live among them; but whence they derive subsistence is a difficult problem even for themselves to solve. Their howlings and croakings evidently came from famished mouths.

25th. Fifteen miles to-day along the river; course as on the 24th, N. W. by W., among the bluffs that border the stream; or if that were tortuous, we travelled from bend to bend, over the table lands on either side. In the valley of the stream, small groves of young and thrifty cotton-wood trees, currant bushes, and the black alder, gave us hopes of soon seeing the grasses and flowers, and the cool springs of the highlands, between us and the Great Beaver [Bear] River. The day, however, was sultry; scarcely a breath of wind moved; the dust that rose from our track lay on the air as the smoke of a village does on a still May morning. So that these occasional appearances of vegetable life imparted less pleasure than they would have done if we had been able to see them through another medium than the dripping mud, manufactured from dust and perspiration.

Near mid-day, we crossed the river from its northern to its southern side, and were emerging from the bushes which entangled our egress, when Jim, uttering a shrill whoop, pointing to a solitary horseman urging his horse up the bluff a half mile below us. Beckoning him to us, we dismounted to allow our jaded animals to feed until he should arrive. In the style of a true mountaineer, he dashed up to us on a rapid gallop, greeting us with as hearty a shake of the hand as he could have bestowed upon a brother, and asked our names and destination; said his name was "Midison Gordon, an independent trapper, that he was bound to Brown's Hole for his squaw and 'possibles,' and was glad to see us," in less time than is usually employed in saying half as much; and accepting an invitation to encamp with us, he continued to express his pleasure at seeing us, till our attention was diverted from him by a halt for the night.

These remnants of the great trapping parties of the American Fur Company,¹⁷² commonly make Brown's Hole their winter quarters. Indeed, I believe the owners of that post to be old trappers of the Company, who, having lost all their relish for former habits of life, by a long residence in the mountains, have established themselves there in order to bring around them, not only the means of subsistence according to their taste, but their merry old companions with their tales, jests, and songs, and honest and brave hearts. Gordon, like all other trappers whom I saw in the mountains, was convinced that there were so few beaver, so little meat, and so many dangers among them, that "a white man had no business there." He, therefore, was going for his squaw and "possibles," preparatory to descending the Columbia to open a farm in the valley of the Willamette. He said that was also the intention of nearly all his fellow-trappers. They proposed to take with them their Indian wives and children, settle in one neighbourhood, and cultivate the earth, or hunt, as inclination or necessity might suggest, and thus pass the evening of their days among the wild pleasures of that delightful wilderness.

26th. Course north-west; distance twenty miles; sometimes on the banks of the river, and again over the swells, to avoid its windings. The country through which we passed to-day, was in some respects more interesting than any we had seen since leaving Brown's Hole. Instead of plateaux, baked and flinty, or hills of loose unproductive loam and sand, shorn by perpetual drought of flower, shrub, and tree, a journey of twenty miles over which would hardly cross grass enough to feed a dozen horses a single day, the slopes of a thousand spherical hills, as green as the fields of the States in May, sent forth the sweet fragrance of teeming vegetation; little streams ran away among the black, white, and orange pebbles; and the dandelion, anemone, and other flowers rejoiced in the spring-day breezes which crept over them. It was May indeed here. The snow had lately disappeared, and the rains had still later been falling, as they do in April in other places. The insects were piping the note of an opening year.

It was the dividing ridge between the tributaries of the Sheetskadee and Great Bear River; and yet not a ridge.¹⁷³ When viewed from its highest points, it appeared an elevated plateau of slightly conical swells, so raised above the vast deserts on the east of it, as to attract the moisture of the clouds. The soil of this region is, however, poor, – not sufficient to bear timber. The grasses grow rankly over most of its surface; and those parts which are barren are covered with red or white sand, that contrasts beautifully with the matted green of other portions. In a word, it was one of those places among the mountains where all is pure. There the air is dense – the water cold – the vegetation fresh; there the snow lies nine months of the year, and when it eventually melts before the warm suns of June and July, the earth is clothed with vegetation almost in a day. About sunset, we descended a sharp declivity of broken rocks, and encamped on a small stream running north. My indefatigable Jim Shoshonie killed an antelope for our suppers. An unexpected favour this; for, from the representations given me of this part of my route, I expected to commence here a long-consuming fast, which would not be broken till I reached Fort Hall, or my grave.

27th. Our last night's encampment proved to have been on a branch of the Great Bear River – the principal, if not the only feeder of the Great Salt Lake.¹⁷⁴ We started down along its verdant little valley about seven o'clock in the morning, and reached the main river about twelve at noon. It was twenty yards wide – water two feet deep, and transparent, current four miles per hour, bottom of brown sand and gravel. After feeding our animals, we descended the river till four o'clock, and halted on its banks for the night. We had travelled thirty miles. The mountains which hemmed in the valley were generally of a conical form, primitive, and often verdant. Their height varied from five hundred to two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the stream. The bottom lands were from one to three miles wide, of a loose, dry, gravelly soil, covered with withered bunch grass. By the water side grew various kinds of trees, as quaking-asp, black birch, and willows; also shrubs of various kinds, as the black alder, small willow, wild wormwood, black currant, and service berry. In the ravines of the mountains, groves of trees sometimes appeared peering up luxuriantly among the black projecting cliffs.

28th. An early rising, a hurried meal, and a rapid saddling and packing of horses, started us from camp at six o'clock. While girding our saddle animals, the last act done in breaking up camp in mountain life, Jim's eagle eye discerned in the distance down the river, "hos, hos."

Indian like, for we had become such in our habits, we put new caps on our rifles, mounted quickly, and circled out behind a barricade of brushwood, in order to ascertain the number, colour, and purpose of such unceremonious intruders upon the territories of our solitude. Jim peered through the leaves with the utmost intensity of an Indian's vision. It was the place for war-parties of the Crows, Sioux, and Blackfeet; and this early appearance of individuals approaching our camp was a circumstance that scented strongly of bows and arrows. But suspense became certainty, a pleasant certainty, as Jim reined his horse from concealment, and galloped away to the stranger, now within rifle-shot of us.

A strong and warm shake of the hand, and various contortions of the face, and uncouth gestures of recognition between them, completed their interview, and the swarthy old trapper approached myself and men. He was no less a personage than the bear-killer, Meek, who figures in the St. Louis Museum, with the paws of an immense grisly bear upon his shoulders in front, the fingers and thumb of his left hand bitten off, while with his right hand he holds the hunter's knife, plunged deeply in the animal's jugular vein.¹⁷⁵ He accosted me with, "Good morning, how are ye? – stranger in the mountains, eh?" And before I could make a monosyllabic reply, he continued, "Have you any meat? Come, I've got the shoulder of a goat, (antelope); let us go back to your camp, and cook, and eat, and talk awhile." We were harnessed for the day's ride, and felt unwilling to lose the cool hours of the morning, and much more so to consume the generous man's last pound of meat. Thanking him, therefore, for his honest kindness, we satisfied him with our refusal, by the assurance that we had meat, and had already breakfasted. On hearing that we were travelling to the Columbia river, he informed us that we might probably go down with the Nez Percés Indians, who, he stated, were encamped at the time on Salmon river, one day's journey from Fort Hall. He was on his way to Brown's Hole for his squaw and "possibles," with the design of joining their camp. These Indians would leave their hunting grounds for their homes about ten days from that date.

This was another remnant of the American Fur Company's trapping parties. He came to the mountains many years ago, and has so long associated with Indians that his manners much resemble theirs. The same wild, unsettled, watchful expression of the eye, the same unnatural gesticulation in conversation, the same unwillingness to use words when a sign, a contortion of the face or body, or movement of the hand will manifest thought; in standing, walking, riding, in all but complexion, he was an Indian. Bidding us good morning, and wheeling away to the day's ride, he said, "Keep your eye shining for the Blackfeet. They are about the 'Beer Springs'; and stay, my white horse tired, one camp down the river; was obliged to 'cache' my pack and leave him; use him if you can, and take him on to the Fort; and look here, I have told you I am Meek, the bear-killer, and so I am. But I think the boys at the museum in St. Louis might have done me up as it really was. The beast only jumped on my back, and stripped off my blanket; scratched some, but didn't pull my shoulder blade off. Well, after he had robbed me of my blanket, I shoved my rifle against him, and blew out his heart. That's all – no fingers bitten off, no knifing; I merely drove a little lead into his palpitator."