Trapper New chuckled.
“Whar? Look under yore hoss, boy. You’re on it!”
“South Pass?” stammered Oliver, astounded.
“Right. Kit says the top—didn’t ye hear him? Behind air the United States, before air Oregon. All that ’ere country, west to the mouth o’ the Columbia at the Pacific Ocean; that air Oregon. And wagh! what a beaver country! Down below us, northwest, air the Valley o’ the Green River, big trappers’ rendezvous place.”
This was the pass—the great South Pass? They had halted upon an open swale between twain low rounded, smooth hills; behind them, the route which they had traversed, stretched a billowy sandy slope which was the ascent, but which Oliver had not recognized as such.
“About the grade of Capitol Hill, from the Avenue, at Washington,” commented Lieutenant Frémont. “How is the other side—the same?”
“About the same,” nodded Kit.
“How runs the road to the Columbia—the remaining part of this Oregon Trail?”
“At the foot of the pass thar’s the Little Sandy an’ the Big Sandy Rivers, an’ all flat desert clear to the Crossing o’ the Green River. Then it gets rougher from the Green west to the Bear an’ on northwest up the Bear to the Sody Springs. Then it air on westward and northward from the B’ar to Fort Hall at the Snake; west up along the Snake—or what some call the Lewis Ford o’ the Columbia—a two weeks’ march across the Plains o’ the Snake an’ a bad country beyond to Fort Boisé toward the mouth o’ the Snake; then it’s across the Blue Mountains, to the Columbia; an’ from thar it air ’bout two hundred miles to Vancouver, they say. As for myself, I’ve never been much west, on that trail, o’ Goose Creek between Hall and Boisé.”
Gazing into the west, where hazy lay Oregon, Frémont’s blue eyes kindled and flashed.