Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/322

316 completely under the water, and gaining the opposite shore followed the band. The Spaniards often take the wild horses in this manner, and frequently by pursuing them upon the open plain. When they have taken one, they confine it with ropes, saddle it, put a halter on it, and having again loosened it they mount and ride it furiously until it is completely exhausted. And they continue to do this until the animal becomes tame and tractable. These wild horses are of almost every color; some of them have a very fine appearance, but they are much smaller than well-bred horses, and their habits are, in some respects, entirely different from those of the domestic horses. From the coral we proceeded across the country to Monte Rey.

Arriving at Monte Rey we found a gentleman and his family who had left the States with us, and with whom, as we have before mentioned, we traveled as far as Fort Hall. They left Fort Hall for California, under the pilotage of Captain Walker, about the same time that we left it for the Falls of the Willammette. After traveling through the dreary country of which we have spoken, as far as the California Mountains, they followed that range South several hundred miles, and entered the Valley of the St. Wakine by Walker's Pass. The small supply of provisions which, by very unpleasant means, they at length procured at Fort Hall, after continued and persevering effort, were exhausted long before they could reach a place where they could be resupplied. A country so barren as that through which they were compelled to travel afforded neither game nor food of any kind, except that upon which the few miserable and beast-like Indians who inhabit that region subsist—lizzards, crickets, ants, and the like—and which would, of course, be revolting to the palate of any other people unless in the very extremity of starvation. They suffered extremely,