Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/333

Rh junction of Portneiff; thence we proceeded to Fort Hall, a distance of twenty-three miles, where we arrived on the 20th day of June, forty days having elapsed since we left Capt. Sutter's in California.

In the whole country between the Eastern base of the California Mountains and Fort Hall we saw no game of any description, excepting a few Antelopes on the head of Marie's River. The greater portion of the country, after leaving the head waters of the Sacramento, is either broken by mountains or covered with extensive wastes of sand and volcanic desolation, and can never be inhabited by a people much superior to the insect and reptile eating savages, found at the present time upon some of its streams.

Here we will leave for a time the Company from California; return to the Falls of the Willammette, and follow, from that place, the Oregon Company, until the time when the two, having accidentally met in the mountains, united.