Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/98

92 along over the piles of rock. They looked, at a distance, like banks of snow resting on the cliffs.

Seventeen miles below these Springs, are the Salmon Falls. These Falls are not perpendicular, except in one or two small shoots on the North side. The great body of the water runs down an inclination of not more than twenty-five feet in three hundred yards. The river here is about one hundred and fifty yards wide, and divided by an Island, commencing at the lower end of the inclination and extending down one fourth of a mile. The Salmon pass over the Falls with ease, when there is sufficient water on them. The surrounding country is very rough, broken, and entirely destitute of both grass and wood. The hills are, from the water in the River, about three hundred feet high. On the South side they are cut up by ravines; but on the North, they come bold and unbroken up within a few hundred yards of the water. There is nothing very picturesque or wild about these Falls, compared with the world of waste and wreck around them. The Indians take immense quantities of Salmon here, which they cut into thin slices, dry in the Sun, and afterwards pack them up in grass cases. The natives along Snake River live principally upon fish and roots, and are the fattest, most depraved, and degraded creatures anywhere to be found among the dregs of human nature. We have been told that during the Salmon season they become as fat as penned pigs, and in the winter so poor and feeble that they frequently die from actual starvation.

After leaving the Salmon Falls, we traveled down near the river, our path frequently leading us along the sides of the almost perpendicular bluffs. Twenty-seven miles below the Salmon Falls we came to the crossing where the companies which preceded us had passed over to the North side, which is much the nearest and best way, but we, having attempted the crossing and finding it too