Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/303



JOURNAL OF E. WILLARD SMITH 263

22nd. Nothing remarkable today except beautiful scenery. We travel more than twenty miles a day. The weather is very pleasant, quite warm at noon while it freezes hard at night.

23d. This morning the road was very rough. At noon we entered a very large valley, called the Park, at the entrance of which we crossed the North Fork of the River Platte, a very fine stream. We saw a great number of buffalo today, prob- ably about two thousand.

24th. Today we are still traveling in the park and surround- ed by herds of buffalo. The weather is still pleasant and we have moonlight nights. It is so cold at night that the water freezes. A beaver was caught this morning in a trap set last night by one of the party.

25th. Today we have had a very rough road to travel over, and at evening encamped on a ridge called The Divide. It divides the water of the Atlantic from the Pacific, and ex- tends a great distance north and south. On the west side of it are the head waters of the Columbia and the Colorado of the West, the former emptying into the Pacific, and the latter into the Gulf of California. On the east side are the head waters of the Missouri and its tributaries, and also the Ar- kansas. We had a slight shower in the evening. We have seen no buffalo today.

26th. Today we have traveled only fifteen miles. The scenery is very rough. We saw only a few bulls and no cows. Nearly all the hills and valleys, since we came among the moun- tains, are covered with wild sage or wormwood, which grows in stiff bushes, seven or eight feet high. The stalks are as large as a man's arm. There are a great many black currants among the mountains, also plums and sarvis [service] and hawthorn berries.

27th. Today we have traveled about twenty miles. The weather still continues very pleasant. At evening just before we encamped for the night we passed a place where the Whites had encamped a few days previous, for the purpose of killing buffalo and drying the meat. From the signs around us, we thought they must have had a fight with the Indians, prob-