“The most horrid stuff I ever put in my mouth,” retorted Mr. Preuss, as he left.
The Carson men afterwards learned that the chief sent to the Frémont lodge, where Mr. Preuss also had quarters, a kettle of the kooyah as a compliment, and that the German was driven by it into the open air. During the march through the Snake country the camps made sport for themselves by slyly sticking some of the kooyah messes under Mr. Preuss’ nose; whereat he always fled.
However, all the others, even the lieutenant, liked the kooyah, which was called in English “tobacco root,” and in scientific language, according to the lieutenant and Mr. Preuss, “valerian.”
The Oregon emigrant trail led westward, down the Bear, between high hills and through immense areas of blue flax now going to seed. Along the trail were travelling, at irregular intervals, squads of emigrants, with their wagons and cattle, either camping or on the move for the day’s march. The main caravan was still some distance ahead, under personal leadership of Dr. Whitman.
“Yonder, over that fust ridge,” directed William New, to Oliver, at their next mess fire, “air the Beer Springs an’ the Steamboat Spring. Wagh! That’ll surprise ye—an’ it’ll give that German something to think of besides kooyah.”
“Do they taste?” queried Oliver.
“Taste, boy! Thar’s a heap o’ tastes! But that Beer Spring group air fine. O’ course they air a drink that don’t hurt ye; but we trappers claim they make you feel like dancing Injun, jest the same. I ’xpect it air the gas, tickling yore insides. If all the drinks in the world war no wuss’n these hyar Beer Springs, made by nature, the world’d be better off. So don’t think, ’cause we old-timers named ’em in fun, that thar’s anything wrong with ’em. Sody Springs they’re called, too.”
The springs were located in a basin enclosed by a semicircle of rugged mountain-crests, on the one hand, and by the river on the other. First, pieces of lava were to be noted, beside the trail; then came the springs themselves—hundreds of them, bubbling and welling from the green and red and white and yellow ground. Many of them had made little cones, of bright colors; and even the current of the river boiled and frothed with the gas.
Everybody quaffed deeply of the waters, which sparkled and bubbled, clear and luke-warm, from the rocks and the tufts of grass.