Chapter 41

41.

A voyage in a bull boat.

IT was about the middle of August (1833) that Mr. Nathaniel J.

Wyeth, as the reader may recollect, launched his bull boat at the

foot of the rapids of the Bighorn, and departed in advance of the

parties of Campbell and Captain Bonneville. His boat was made of

three buffalo skins, stretched on a light frame, stitched

together, and the seams paid with elk tallow and ashes. It was

eighteen feet long, and about five feet six inches wide, sharp at

each end, with a round bottom, and drew about a foot and a half

of water-a depth too great for these upper rivers, which abound

with shallows and sand-bars. The crew consisted of two

half-breeds, who claimed to be white men, though a mixture of the

French creole and the Shawnee and Potawattomie. They claimed,

moreover, to be thorough mountaineers, and first-rate hunters --

the common boast of these vagabonds of the wilderness. Besides

these, there was a Nez Perce lad of eighteen years of age, a kind

of servant of all work, whose great aim, like all Indian

servants, was to do as little work as possible; there was,

moreover, a half-breed boy, of thirteen, named Baptiste, son of a

Hudson's Bay trader by a Flathead beauty; who was travelling with

Wyeth to see the world and complete his education. Add to these,

Mr. Milton Sublette, who went as passenger, and we have the crew

of the little bull boat complete.

It certainly was a slight armament with which to run the gauntlet

through countries swarming with hostile hordes, and a slight bark

to navigate these endless rivers, tossing and pitching down

rapids, running on snags and bumping on sand-bars; such, however,

are the cockle-shells with which these hardy rovers of the

wilderness will attempt the wildest streams; and it is surprising

what rough shocks and thumps these boats will endure, and what

vicissitudes they will live through. Their duration, however, is

but limited; they require frequently to be hauled out of the

water and dried, to prevent the hides from becoming water-soaked;

and they eventually rot and go to pieces.

The course of the river was a little to the north of east; it ran

about five miles an hour, over a gravelly bottom. The banks were

generally alluvial, and thickly grown with cottonwood trees,

intermingled occasionally with ash and plum trees. Now and then

limestone cliffs and promontories advanced upon the river, making

picturesque headlands. Beyond the woody borders rose ranges of

naked hills.

Milton Sublette was the Pelorus of this adventurous bark; being