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Rh him and another to let him go, and that he did not know how to talk to us: that he did not know whether he should go under or not—(meaning that he did not know whether we did or did not intend to kill him). But we turned away and left him, taking a straight course for the Company, thinking it not very safe to be in the neighborhood of three hundred Sioux. We put spurs to our horses, and kept a good gait until we considered that we were out of their reach.

We arrived at our Company's encampment that night, having killed nothing. When we told them of our adventure with the Sioux, all the Traders joined in exclaiming against us, for not killing him. We plead that it was unmanly and unfair to take the life even of the meanest enemy, under such circumstances; but they adopted the Indian argument, and said that as we were among Indians, we must treat them as they treated us; and so the white people, who live in the Rocky Mountains, act towards their enemies.

On the evening of the 7th we left the head of Sweet Water, and in a few hours passed over the dividing ridge, through the Grand Pass, and encamped by a marsh, which is one of the sources of Green River, a tributary of the Colorado, of the Gulf of California.

We slept here, on the great Backbone of North America, where the sources of the Rivers which empty into the oceans which bound it, on the East and on the West, are only a few miles apart.

The lofty summits of the Wind River Mountains, with their wide fields of eternal snow, appeared to be almost beside us. We had a heavy frost during the night, and in the morning the water in our camp kettles was covered with ice nearly one fourth of an inch thick; and every thing that had been exposed to the dew, which fell in the evening, was perfectly glazed with ice.