Chapter 46 - Page 2

Wallamut, they could scarcely hope

to obtain sufficient supplies for the winter; if they lingered

any longer in the country the snows would gather upon the

mountains and cut off their retreat. By hastening their return,

they would be able to reach the Blue Mountains just in time to

find the elk, the deer, and the bighorn; and after they had

supplied themselves with provisions, they might push through the

mountains before they were entirely blocked by snow. Influenced

by these considerations, Captain Bonneville reluctantly turned

his back a second time on the Columbia, and set off for the Blue

Mountains. He took his course up John Day's River, so called from

one of the hunters in the original Astorian enterprise. As famine

was at his heels, he travelled fast, and reached the mountains by

the 1st of October. He entered by the opening made by John Day's

River; it was a rugged and difficult defile, but he and his men

had become accustomed to hard scrambles of the kind. Fortunately,

the September rains had extinguished the fires which recently

spread over these regions; and the mountains, no longer wrapped

in smoke, now revealed all their grandeur and sublimity to the

eye.

They were disappointed in their expectation of finding abundant

game in the mountains; large bands of the natives had passed

through, returning from their fishing expeditions, and had driven

all the game before them. It was only now and then that the

hunters could bring in sufficient to keep the party from

starvation.

To add to their distress, they mistook their route, and wandered

for ten days among high and bald hills of clay. At length, after

much perplexity, they made their way to the banks of Snake River,

following the course of which, they were sure to reach their

place of destination.

It was the 20th of October when they found themselves once more

upon this noted stream. The Shoshokoes, whom they had met with in

such scanty numbers on their journey down the river, now

absolutely thronged its banks to profit by the abundance of

salmon, and lay up a stock for winter provisions. Scaffolds were

everywhere erected, and immense quantities of fish drying upon

them. At this season of the year, however, the salmon are

extremely poor, and the travellers needed their keen sauce of

hunger to give them a relish.

In some places the shores were completely covered with a stratum

of dead salmon, exhausted in ascending the river, or destroyed at

the falls; the fetid odor of which tainted the air.

It was not until the travellers