Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/313

 Heart of Jesus,” accompanied by the Rev. Father Point. Three Indian families, desirous of visiting St. Mary’s, served us for guides. Our journey for some days, lay along the serpentine course of the river St. Ignatius, in the valley of the North. The soil of this valley is for the most part rich, and well adapted to cultivation, but subject to frequent inundations. Grain and potatos are here cultivated by the Indians with great success. Father Joset, assisted by the savages, has already enclosed and prepared for cultivation, a large field, capable of affording sustenance to several Indian families. Our hopes, then, of seeing {269} these poor Indians furnished with a plentiful supply of provisions, and their wandering habits thereby checked, will with the blessing of God, be realized at no very distant day. To attain the desirable object of uniting them in villages, and thus forming them to habits of industry, we need, however, more means than we possess at present—we are very much in want of seeds of various kinds, and of agricultural implements.

Before arriving at the snow-capped chain of mountains, which separates the Cœur d’Alenes from the Flat-Heads, we wound our way for two days, through forests almost impenetrable and over immense beds of rock, always following the course of the river, except where its tortuous windings would lead us too circuitous a route.[186] So tortuous indeed is its course here, that in less than eight hours, we crossed it no less than forty-four times. The majestic cedars that shade the gorge at this point are truly prodigious, most of them measure from twenty to thirty feet in circumference, with a proportionate height, and so numerous, that as the rays of the sun cannot penetrate