Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 14.djvu/338



298 JOURNAL OF JOHN WORK

Friday, June 1st.

Keen frost in the night, stormy, cold weather during the day.

Continued our route 12 miles W. across the mountains and down into the valley where a number of small branches fell in from the mountains and formed the head of the E. fork of Sandwich Island river. This little valley is about 20 miles long and 15 wide. A small fork falls in from the S., 2 from the eastward, one from the W., all of which form one stream which runs to the N. W. through a narrow channel bordered by steep, impassable rocks. The different forks in the valley have some willows on the banks and seem well adapted for beaver, yet the men who have been out in every direction setting the traps complain that the marks of beaver are scarce. The water has been lately very high and all the plain over- flowed, though this valley has not been known ever to have been hunted, but is now subsiding. To the southward there is a small height of land which separates the waters of this river from a fork of Ogden's river, to the westward there is a high rugged mountain covered with snow. Our road today was very rugged and hilly, and in many places boggy, the snow having but very recently gone off the ground, indeed, we passed over several banks of it.

Saturday, June 1st.

Fine weather.

We are like to be devoured by mosquitoes. Did not raise camp that we might see what beaver might be taken. The people visited and changed their traps. Only 12 beaver were taken, which is nothing for the number of traps, 150, which were in the water, and what is worse the men complain there is little signs of any more worth while being got. Several of the people were out hunting, but with little success, which I regret as provisions are getting pretty scarce in the camp. Not an animal to be seen but antelopes and but few of them, and even these are so shy that it is difficult to approach them. There are some cranes in the valley but almost as difficult to