The stream makes a bend at this spot, and does not run quite so swiftly, about eighty yards wide, with a dry bank on the side we are, but swampy on the opposite. We launch our raft; she floats like a boat, make ropes fast to her, and stow a coil on board; with one man I commence crossing, paddling with rough oars hewn from a pine-branch. They pay-out rope as we near the opposite bank; twice we whirl round, and come very near being a wreck, but right again. We are over. Now we make fast our rope, and the men on the other side haul her back; and thus we tug her from side to side, heavily freighted; we have made a very successful crossing, neither losing nor damaging anything. The mules swam the river, and also got safely over.
May 27th.—Fine morning: made an early start; kept close along on the course of the river for about twenty miles, following a ridge lightly timbered. The opposite or east bank is an enormous mass of black basaltic rock, extending several miles in length. The top is like a table, reaching as far as one could see, quite black, and not the vestige of a plant visible. The black expanse had exactly the appearance of a bed of rocks, over which the tide ebbed and flowed. Crossed a creek fifteen miles from camp, deep and swift, and about fifteen yards wide; five miles beyond this cross another creek, about half the size. Leave the timber and come out on a wide sandy kind of desert, covered with wild-sage and stunted juniper-trees, frightfully dusty, and most tiresome for the mules; no chance of camping until quite over it, which is twenty miles. After a weary march reach a creek, where I stop; a capital camping-ground, with fine grass and water. Passed close along the bases of the Three Sisters, lofty mountains, at this time covered with snow. Saw a great many abandoned lodges, but no Indians. The sandy places were quite alive with the Oregon horned toad (Tapaya Douglassii), which is a lizard really very harmless, and particularly ugly. Every stream too was thronged with beaver.
May 28th.—Mules all in at 4 a.m. Got off in good time: weather not nearly so cold. Looked over the creek, but saw no gold, but any quantity of beaver-workings; trees four feet round had been cut down by them. Passed through a tract of lightly-timbered land and open grassy valleys; crossed a small creek about eight miles from camp, descending rapidly all the way for about eighteen miles.
Came on to the top of a high basaltic mountain, that seemed to offer an almost perpendicular descent into a deep gorge or cañon. I rode right and left, but discovering no better place, down we went; how the mules managed to scramble to the bottom without falling head over heels I know not, but we got safely down. I believe it would have been utterly impossible to have got up over it a second time. Through the gorge ran a large swift stream, called by the Indians Wychus creek, in which we found a good fording-place and got over it; safely camped about a mile below the place we forded. The camp was completely shut in by almost vertical cliffs of basalt and tuffa, covered thickly with what I take to be ancient river-drift; the cliffs were, I should say, quite 100 feet high.
The great black butte down which we scrambled was a volcano, and an active one too, not a very long time ago; streams of lava, just like slag, that had run in a molten state as if from out a huge glass furnace, reached from its summit to its base; and the red cindery earth, on either side this congealed stream, told plainly enough how fearfully hot it must have been. One would imagine this district was entirely volcanic, the great desert-waste we crossed being composed of pumice, scoria, and ashes. Perhaps these lesser hills were safety-valves to the more conspicuous mountains in the coast-range of British Columbia and Washington Territory—Mounts Baker, Rainier, St. Helens, and others.
Several pillars, composed of a kind of conglomerate, quite away from all the surrounding rocks, stand as if man had hewn or rather built them—ghostly obelisks, that have a strange and unusual look. I suppose the portions that once joined them to the mass, from which they were detached, must have been crumbled off by Time’s fingers, and these solitary pedestals left as records. Round them, too, were scores of tiny heaps of boulders, built, as I am informed, by the Snake Indians, who suppose these pillars are the remains of spirits that have been turned into stone; but for what object they really pile up these little altars I could never discover, though the Indians tell you as a powerful ‘medicine’; but who can say what that means?
May 29th.—All night it rained in torrents, and I do not think I ever saw so dark a night; the rain put out all our fires, and I could neither see men or mules, although close to them. Got the mules together at 7 a.m., but did not make an early start, in consequence of the men being tired from want of sleep: we managed to start at eight o’clock. Our first task was to get out of the gorge. It was a most tedious and even dangerous job, for the ground was loose, and constantly broke away from under the mules’ feet, but at last we managed to scramble to the top.
For twenty miles farther it was a continued series of uphill and downhill, all loose basaltic ground, and very hard to travel over. Descending a long sandy hill we came to an Indian reserve (the Warm Spring reservation) and we encamp. The house is a large quadrangular building of squared blocks, loopholed for shooting through. Six white men live here, and the Indians on the reservation are the Des Chutes tribe; they cultivate a small quantity of ground very badly. All hands are in a great state of ferment. A band of Snake Indians have just made a raid on the reservation, driven off seventeen head of stock, and are hourly expected to return. This is cheering, considering I must pass the night here. But, luckily, no Indians came.
May 30th.—I should be seventy miles from the camp I am to join; start with one man as a companion at three o’clock in the morning. The silver stream of light from the unclouded moon illumines the trail we follow as brightly as sunshine. The mules are to follow. As day dawns an open plain is seen, spreading far away right and left, and along it a horseman gallops towards us.
As he nears I make him out to be an Indian on a skewbald horse. We stop and parley, and I find he is a Snake scout; both horse and rider are splendid specimens of their kind. A circle of eagle’s feathers fastened to the skin of the ermine surrounds his head, and long raven black hair covers his neck: a scarlet blanket, elaborately beaded, hangs from his shoulders; a broad wampum-belt contains his knife and powder-horn, and in his right hand he bears a rifle. But very little paint daubs his shining-red skin, through which every muscle stands out as if cast in bronze; he is a handsome savage, if there ever was one. As we ride in opposite directions, I cannot help thinking that men and mules will stand but little chance if all the Snakes are like to this sable warrior. Reached a cabin at the Tye creek after doing forty-five miles, where we remained for the night.