Chapter 26

26.

A retrogade move Channel of a mountain torrent Alpine

scenery Cascades Beaver valleys Beavers at work Their

architecture Their modes of felling trees Mode of trapping

beaver Contests of skill A beaver "up to trap" Arrival at the

Green River caches

THE VIEW from the snowy peak of the Wind River Mountains, while

it had excited Captain Bonneville's enthusiasm, had satisfied him

that it would be useless to force a passage westward, through

multiplying barriers of cliffs and precipices. Turning his face

eastward, therefore, he endeavored to regain the plains,

intending to make the circuit round the southern point of the

mountain. To descend, and to extricate himself from the heart of

this rock-piled wilderness, was almost as difficult as to

penetrate it. Taking his course down the ravine of a tumbling

stream, the commencement of some future river, he descended from

rock to rock, and shelf to shelf, between stupendous cliffs and

beetling crags that sprang up to the sky. Often he had to cross

and recross the rushing torrent, as it wound foaming and roaring

down its broken channel, or was walled by perpendicular

precipices; and imminent was the hazard of breaking the legs of

the horses in the clefts and fissures of slippery rocks. The

whole scenery of this deep ravine was of Alpine wildness and

sublimity. Sometimes the travellers passed beneath cascades which

pitched from such lofty heights that the water fell into the

stream like heavy rain. In other places, torrents came tumbling

from crag to crag, dashing into foam and spray, and making

tremendous din and uproar.

On the second day of their descent, the travellers, having got

beyond the steepest pitch of the mountains, came to where the

deep and rugged ravine began occasionally to expand into small

levels or valleys, and the stream to assume for short intervals a

more peaceful character. Here, not merely the river itself, but

every rivulet flowing into it, was dammed up by communities of

industrious beavers, so as to inundate the neighborhood, and make

continual swamps.

During a mid-day halt in one of these beaver valleys, Captain

Bonneville left his companions, and strolled down the course of

the stream to reconnoitre. He had not proceeded far when he came

to a beaver pond, and caught a glimpse of one of its painstaking

inhabitants busily at work upon the dam. The curiosity of the

captain was aroused, to behold the mode of operating of this

far-famed architect; he moved forward, therefore, with the utmost

caution, parting the