Our guide too sanctioned this course; always saying when the subject was introduced that the dawn of day was the time for Indian attacks, and that they would rise early to find his eyes shut after the howl of the wolf on the hills had announced the approach of light. We however took the precaution to encamp at night in a deep woody glen, which concealed the light of our fire, and slept with our equipments {239} upon us, and our well primed rifles across our breasts.
On the morning of the 21st we were awakened at sunrise, by our servant who had thus early been in search of our animals. The sun rose over the eastern mountains brilliantly, and gave promise of a fine day. Our route lay among vast swelling hills, the sides of which were covered with groves of the large yellow pine and aspen. These latter trees exclude every other from their society. They stand so closely that not the half of their number live until they are five inches in diameter. Those also that grow on the borders of the groves are generally destroyed, being deprived of their bark seven or eight feet up, by the elk which resort to them yearly to rub off the annual growth of their horns. The snow on the tops of the hills was melting, and along the lower edge of it, where the grass was green and tender, herds of buffalo were grazing. So far distant were they from the vales through which we travelled, that they appeared a vast collection of dark specks on the line of the sky.
By the side of the pebbly brooks, grew many beautiful plants. A species of convolvulus and honeysuckle, two species of {240} wild hops and the mountain flax, were among them. Fruits were also beginning to appear; as wild plums, currants, yellow and black; the latter like those of the same colour in the gardens, the former larger than either the red or black, but of an unpleasant astringent flavour.—We had not, since entering the mountains, seen any indication of volcanic action. The rocky strata and the soil appeared to be of primary formation. We made fifteen miles to-day in a general course of north by west.
On the 22nd we travelled eight miles through a country similar to that we had passed the day before. We were still on the waters of the Platte; but seldom in sight of the main stream. Numerous noisy brooks ran among the hills over which we rode. During the early part of the morning buffalo bulls were often seen crossing our path: they were however so poor and undesirable, that we shot none of them. About ten o'clock we came upon a fresh trail, distinctly marked by hoofs and dragging lodge poles. Kelly judged these "signs" to be not more than twenty four hours old, and to have been made by a party of Eutaws which had passed into {241} Boyou Salade to hunt the buffalo. Hostile Indians in our immediate neighbourhood was by no means an agreeable circumstance to us. We could not contend with any hope of success against one hundred and fifty tomahawks and an equal number of muskets and bows and arrows. They would also frighten the buffalo back to the bull pen, and thus prevent us from laying in a stock of meat farther along to support us across the desert in advance. We therefore determined to kill the next bull that we should meet, cure the best pieces for packing, and thus prepare ourselves for a siege or a retreat, as circumstances might dictate; or if the Indians should prevent our obtaining other and better meat, and yet not interrupt us by any hostile demonstration in pursuing our journey, we might, by an economical use of what we could pack from this point, be able to reach, before we should perish with hunger, the game which we hoped to find on tributaries of Grand River.
We, therefore, moved on with great caution; and at about two o'clock killed a fine young bull. He fell in a glen through which a little brook murmured along to a copse just below. The bulls in considerable {242} number were manifesting their surplus wrath on the other side of the little wood with as much apparent complacency as certain animals with fewer legs and horns often do, when there is not likely to be any thing in particular to oppose them. But fortunately for the reputation of their pretensions, as sometimes happens to their biped brethren, a circumstance chanced to occur, when their courage seemed waxing to the bursting state, on which it could expend its energies. The blood of their slaughtered companions scented the breeze, and on they came, twenty or more, tail in air, to take proper vengeance.
We dropped our butcher knives, mounted quickly, and were about to accommodate them with the contents of our rifles, when, like many perpendicular bellowers, as certain danger comes, they fled as bravely as they had approached. Away they racked, for buffalo never trot, over the brown barren hills in the north-east, looking neither to the right nor left, for the long hair around the head does not permit such aberrations of their optics; but onward gloriously did they roll their massive bulks—now sinking in the vales and now blowing up the ascents; stopping {243} not an instant in their career until they looked like creeping insects on the brow of the distant mountain. Having thus vanquished, by the most consummate generalship and a stern patriotism in the ranks never surpassed by Jew or Gentile, these "abandoned rebels," we butchered our meat, and as one of the works of returning peace, loaded it upon our animals, and travelled in search of quaking-asp wood wherewithal to dry it. The traders and trappers always prefer this wood for such purposes, because, when dry, it is more inodorous than any other; and consequently does not so sensibly change the flavour of the meat dried over a fire made of it. Half an hour's ride brought us to a grove of this timber, where we encamped for the night—dried our meat, and Eutaws near or far, slept soundly. In this remark I should except, perhaps, the largest piece of human nature among us, who had, as his custom was, curled down hard-by our brave old guide and slept at intervals, only an eye at a time, for fear of Indians.
23rd. Eighteen miles to-day among rough precipices, overhanging crags, and roaring torrents. There were, however, between the declivities and among the copses of {244} cotton-wood, quaking-asp and fir, and yellow pine, some open glades and beautiful valleys of green verdure, watered by the rivulets gushing from the stony hills, and sparkling with beautiful flowers. Five or six miles from our last encampment, we came upon the brow of a woody hill that overlooked the valley, where the waters on which we were travelling unite with others that come down from the mountains in the north, and from what is properly called the south fork of the Great Platte, within the mountains. Here we found fresh Indian tracks; and on that account deemed it prudent to take to the timbered heights, bordering the valley on the west, in order to ascertain the position of the Indians, their numbers, &c., before venturing within their reach. We accordingly, for three hours, wound our way in silence among fallen timber and thickset cotton-wood; climbed every neighbouring height, and examined the depressions in the plain, which could not be seen from the lower hills.
Having searched the valley thoroughly in this manner, and, perceiving from the peaceable and careless bearing of the small bands of buffalo around its borders, {245} that if there were Indians within it they were at some distance from our trail, we descended from the heights, and struck through a deep ravine across it, to the junction of the northern and southern waters of the stream.
We found the river at this place a hundred and fifty yards wide, and of an average depth of about six feet, with a current of five miles the hour. Its course hence is E. N. E. about one hundred miles, where it rushes through a magnificent kenyon[128] or chasm in the eastern range of the Rocky Mountains to the plains of the Great Prairie Wilderness. This valley is a congeries or collection of valleys. That is, along the banks of the main and tributary streams a vale extends a few rods or miles, nearly or quite separated from a similar one beyond, by a rocky ridge or bute or a rounded hill covered with grass or timber, which protrudes from the height towards the stream. This is a bird's-eye view of Boyou Salade, so named from the circumstance that native rock salt is found in some parts of it. We were in the central portion of it. To the north, and south, and west, its isolated plains rise one above the other, always beautiful, and covered {246} with verdure during the months of spring and summer. But when the storms of autumn and winter come, they are the receptacles of vast bodies of snow, which fall or are drifted there from the Anahuac Ridge, on its western horizon. A sweet spot this, for the romance of the future as well as the present and past. The buffalo have for ages resorted here about the last days of July, from the arid plains of the Arkansas and the Platte; and thither the Eutaws and Cheyennes from the mountains around the Santa Fé, and the Shoshonies or Snakes and Arrapahoes from the west, and the Blackfeet, Crows and Sioux from the north, have for ages met, and hunted, and fought, and loved. And when their battles and hunts were interrupted by the chills and snows of November, they have separated for their several winter resorts. How wild and beautiful the past as it comes up fledged with the plumage of the imagination!
These vales, studded with a thousand villages of conical skin wigwams, with their thousands of fires blazing on the starry brow of night! I see the dusky forms crouching around the glowing piles of ignited logs, in family groups whispering {247} the dreams of their rude love; or gathered around the stalwart form of some noble chief at the hour of midnight, listening to the harangue of vengeance or the whoop of war, that is to cast the deadly arrow with the first gleam of morning light. Or may we not see them gathered, a circle of braves around an aged tree, surrounded each by the musty trophies of half a century's daring deeds. The eldest and richest in scalps, rises from the centre of the ring and advances to the tree. Hear him: