Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 17.djvu/56



48 HARRISON C. DALE

hills 2 and then north along a large branch of Miller's river coming in from the north. 3 Up this they traveled, the first day, twenty-five miles, and the next, twenty-one miles, encamp- ing on the margin of a stream flowing north. 4 . Two days more brought them to a stream "running due north which they concluded to be one of the upper branches of Snake River/' 8 This stream they descended about a hundred miles. 6 Abandon- ing the river, they struck northeast across the Teton range, forded several streams, including the left fork of the Snake, and, bending their course constantly to the east and southeast, finally, on October 11, found themselves "encamped on a small stream near the foot of Spanish river mountain." 7 They crossed this elevation on the twelfth, reaching on the other side a stream a hundred and sixty yards wide. 8 on the seven- teenth, they passed two large tributaries of this stream rising in the (Wind River) mountains to the north, and, on the eighteenth, a third tributary. 9 On the nineteenth and twentieth they continued their course, striking a large Indian trail run- ning southeast which they had crossed on the fifteenth. 10 Con- tinuing in general in a southeasterly direction, they followed this trail during the nineteenth and part of the twentieth, but when they found it turning northeast, they abandoned it, con- tinuing their own way southeast. Next day, the twenty-first, however, they turned north northeast, striking the trail again. That day they made fifteen miles ; on the twenty-second they made only eight but they crossed a divide. The twenty-third, they reached a stream running south southeast, which they concluded could not, however, be a tributary of the Missouri. 11 Accordingly they turned due east all that day and on the twenty-

2 Preuss range ( ?)

3 Smith's fork or Thomas fork, according to Coues, Ibid., loc. cit.

4 Salt river, Coues, Ibid., loc. cit.; Chittenden, American Fur Trade, New York, 1902, I, 209; Irving, Ibid., II, 138.

5 Irving, Ibid., II, 137.

6 South or left fork of Snake river. 91 miles, Coues, Ibid., loc. no miles, Chittenden, Ibid., loc. cit.

7 Irving, Ibid., II, 153. The southern spur of the Gros Ventre range near the sources of Green river.

8 Green river, Coues, Ibid., loc. cit. Chittenden, Ibid., I, 210.

9 The Sandy (?), Irving, Ibid., II, 159.

10 "Probably the regular highway down Green river valley," Chittenden Ibid loc. cit.

11 Irving, Ibid., II, 165.