Page:Rocky Mountain life.djvu/51

 of an invading army, swept onward its desolating course, leaving in its track naught save a blackened waste of smoking ruins!

Altogether, it was a sublime spectacle, a stupendous scene, grand and imposing beyond description, and terrible in its beauty! Commingled with sensations of wonder and admiration, it tended to impress the beholder with feelings of painful melancholy. The broad expanse, but a few moments since arrayed in all the mourning grandeur of fading autumn, was now a naked desert, and every vestige of loveliness in an instant snatched from view!

How sudden, how awful, how marked the change! and yet, how magnificent in its career, though doleful its sequel!

We were speedily under way, with as much earnestness of advance as that of righteous Lot, in his escape from burning Sodom.4 For a while the pursuing

3 "Lave" appears to be a corruption of the Spanish word levar, to get up, or arouse, as from sleep. It is in common use among mountaineers.

4 The great peril of our situation, and the pressing necessity of a hurried flight, may be readily inferred from the fact, that one waggon was freighted with a large quantity of gunpowder. None of us were quite so brave or present-minded as several Mexicans, in the employ of Messrs. Bent & St. Vrain, on an occasion somewhat similar. While journeying across

enemy kept even pace, and threatened to overtake us, till, headed by the strong wind, which meanwhile had changed its course, it began to slacken its speed and abate its greediness.

About sunrise we crossed the regular Pawnee trails, (leading to and from their hunting grounds, which bore the appearance of being much frequented,) and at 10 o'clock, A. M., reached the Platte river, having travelled a distance of thirty miles—without halting.

The mountain road strikes the above stream at lat. 40° 41' 06" north, long. 99° 17' 47" west from Greenwich, some twenty miles below the head of Grand Island. This island is densely wooded and broad, and extends for fifty or sixty miles in length. The river banks are very sparsely timbered, a deficiency we had occasion to remark during the remainder of our journey.

The valley of the Platte at this place is six or seven miles wide, and the river itself between one and two miles from bank to bank. Its waters are very shallow, and are scattered over their broad bed in almost innumerable channels, nearly obscured by the naked sand-bars that bechequer its entire course through the grand prairie. Its peculiarity in this respect gave birth to the name of Platte, (shallow,) which it received from the French, and Chartre, (surface,) from the Mexicans, —the Indians, according to Washington Irving, calling it Nebraska,5 a term synonymous with that of the French and Americans, —however, I am ignorant in reference to the latter.