All was lovely. Starr had just begun to sing one of his favorite missionary hymns, something about “the Gospel ship is sailing now,” when the river made a sudden turn to the left with a boiling eddy, and the boat crashed head on against the overhanging wall of rock, smashing all the lodge poles and compelling the boisterous singer to turn a somersault backward to save himself from being instantly killed. The gallant little craft bore the shock without bursting, and we went down stream (stern) foremost a short distance onto a shelfing rock where an examination developed the fact that nothing was damaged excepting twenty-two fine lodge poles.
On November 23, nearing Jackson Lake, the valley of the Snake was opening before the party.
Hundreds of otter were seen. These growled at us in passing from their holes in the bank, not being accustomed to boats. We shot several.... An hour later we ran out into Jackson’s Lake, and passed the train just as a mule fell under a log across the trail, struggled a moment, and died. Camped on the lake shore three miles from the inlet.[1]
The following day both land and water parties progressed along the western shore of Jackson Lake, the train finding
... terrible severe traveling, climbing over rocks and through tangled forests of pine, aspen, and other varieties of timber.... Abandoned one horse.... We were too near the mountains to get a full view, but above us rose the huge masses of glistening granites too steep to retain much snow.... On the opposite shore are extensive Beaver swamps, and great areas of marsh, now frozen.[2]
The trout bite well, and we have a good supply. Ate our last flour today. Starr cooked one of the fine otter killed the day before. The flesh was nice looking. It was very fat and tempting. Baked in a Dutch oven and fragrant with proper dressing we anticipated a feast, were helped bountifully and started with voracious appetites. The first mouthful went down, but did not remain. It came up without a struggle. Only Starr could hold it. The taste was delicately fishy, and not revolting at all, but the human stomach is evidently not intended for use as an Otter trap. Like Banquo’s ghost, “It will not down.” We did not try Otter again.
November 25th. Laid over, giving the stock a rest and repaired boat. Warren kept us well supplied with trout, which were in fine condition. In the afternoon my attention was called to an object moving in the lake. It proved to be a deer, swimming from the large island across to the opposite shore of the little bay. We had just finished with the little boat, and catching up the big rifle, while the others pushed off, Starr and Applegate rowed (me) out to intercept the deer. It saw us coming and turning to the left reached the shore about three hundred yards away, where it stopped, shivering on the bank. We stopped and let the boat settle to steadiness and I fired. The deer was badly hit, and stood still. I fired again, and it fell into the water dead. It was the first game we had killed for a long time and came in the nick of time. After dragging it into the boat we found the two bullet holes about three inches apart and the last one had gone through the heart of the animal.
When the gun was fired first, the whole party turned out along the shore thinking than an avalanche was coming, and the noise of the second discharge had not ceased when we landed with the game. It was an echo. We spent hours testing it afterward, and surely nothing on earth can equal it. The report of the big rifle was followed by a prolonged roar that seemed to eddy in the little bay in a vast volume of condensed thunder, then charged up the great channel in a hollow, deep growl giving consecutive reports which bounded from cliff to cliff and these re-echoed until far up the canyon came back a rattle of musketry as on a skirmish line, mingled with mournful waves of vibratory rumbling. These were succeeded by cracks and rustlings, and a moaning sigh which slowly receded and died away far up along the heights. Time, one minute and 25 seconds. We tried our voices together, and the result was deafening and overwhelming. There were seven in the party, and we were answered back by a hoarse mob of voices in accumulating thousands from the great gorge, and these, a moment after retreating up the channel called to each other and back at us ’til the multiplied voices mingled in a harsh jargon of weird and wild receding volume of sound, ending in a long moaning sigh and a rustling as of falling leaves among the gleaming spires far away above us.
I then tried Starr’s tremendous voice alone, and had him call, “Oh, Joe!” with a prolonged rising inflection on the first and an equally prolonged falling inflection on the second word, repeating it at intervals of 30 seconds. Experience had taught us that this call could be heard more distinctly and farther in the mountains than any other practiced. The sound of his voice at the first call had not ceased when a hundred exact repititions were reflected to the little bay. Then a rush of hoarse exclamations followed up the gorge and the fusilade of calls on very rock and cliff answered, “Oh, Joe!” And these sounds echoed and re-echoed a thousand times reaching higher and higher along the mighty walls, ’til faint goblin whispers from the cold, icy shafts and the spectral hollows answered back in clicking notes and hisses, but distinctly always the words, “Oh, Joe!”
A full band of music playing here would give such a concert as the world has never heard. There is a weird, unearthly volume and distinctness to the echo here, and a chasing afar off and returning of the sounds, unequalled and simply indescribable. We named this inlet Spirit Bay.[3]
The party continued along the lake shore, the usual mode of travel being 3 men in the boat, 4 with the animals on land. Doane’s horse was abandoned on November 26. All of the men were violently ill from the deer meat, the Lieutenant diagnosing the sickness as “cholera morbus.” The party was forced to lay over most of 2 days, but reached the outlet of the lake on November 30, started down river, and camped 2 miles downstream from the Buffalo Fork on that date, the boat having made about 30 miles that day.
December 1st. Moved on down the river. Sergeant and myself still very weak. Camped opposite Gros Ventre Butte, which is in the middle of the valley, and in front of Mount Hayden (earlier name for the Grand Teton) and its mighty canyon. (From this description this camp appears to have been opposite Blacktail Butte, in the vicinity of the present location of Moose.) During the day Warren and White followed a herd of Elk ’til dark, but did not get one. Light snow on the ground. Weather warm. At noon 65 degrees. Distance 12 m.
The boat now carries all the property as the animals can carry no more. The river is a fine broad stream but the current is that of a mountain torrent and the channel divides so often that we counted over one hundred islands today. Occasionally therefore, we came to shoal water by getting in the wrong shute and had to lift her over. The bed of the stream is entirely of coarse gravel and boulders, mostly of granite, and the banks are low. Fishing good, but fresh fish is too thin a diet to subsist on alone. We have now no coffee, sugar, tea, bacon, and worst of all, no tobacco. Nothing but a few beans left. The game is scarce and shy. I cannot hunt and keep the observations at the same time. The boat can now go faster than the stock, but we cannot separate, with “Mad River Canyon” in front of us.
A glorious night, moon in the full, but empty stomachs. We are now far enough away from the lakes to be clear of the clouds of vapor and local snow storms. Our camp is about at a central point with reference to obtaining a view of the Tetons, and at a distance of fifteen miles from the nearest part of the range. (Distance actually about 7 miles, Doane’s estimate inaccurate.) The moonlight view was one of unspeakable grandeur. There are twenty-two summits in the line, all of them mighty mountains, with the gleaming spire of Mount Hayden rising in a pinnacle above all. The whole range is of naked rock in vast glittering masses, mostly coarse granites, but with some carboniferous and metamorphose rocks, the splendid colorings of these sheeted as they were with ice, contrasted finely with the snowy masses in all places where the snow would lie, and with the sombre depths of the great avalanche channels and mighty canyons. Of the latter the grandest is the Teton (Cascade Canyon) which half surrounds Mount Hayden, is four thousand feet deep, where it opens out into the valley in front of us, has a splendid torrent of roaring cascades in its channel and a baby glacier still at its head. The wide valley in front, seamed with rocky channels and heaped with moraines, is a grim, ruinous landscape. There are no foothills to the Tetons. They rise suddenly in rugged majesty from the rock strewn plain. Masses of heavy forests appear on the glacial debris and in parks behind the curves of the lower slopes, but the general field of vision is glittering, glaciated rock. The soft light floods the great expanse of the valley, the winding silvery river and the resplendent, deeply carved mountain walls. The vast masses of Neve on the upper ledges from their lofty resting places shine coldly down, and stray masses of clouds, white and fleecy, cast deep shadows over land and terrace, forest and stream. And later on when the moon had gone down in exaggerated volume behind the glorified spire of the Grand Teton (Doane must have used the names Mount Hayden and Grand Teton interchangeably) the stars succeeded with their myriad sparkling lights, and these blazed up in setting on the sharpcut edges of the great, serrated wall like Indian signal fires in successive spectral flashes, rising and dying out by hundreds as the hours passed on. On the wide continent of North America there is no mountain group to compare in scenic splendor with the Great Tetons. There was not a pound of food in camp. We ate the last beans for supper, before going out to make notes on the Teton view.
MAP OF THE REGION
CENTRAL ROCKY MOUNTAINS