Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/24

 great numbers of Antelopes, as we passed up the River; but they were so wild, and the valley was so level, that it was difficult to approach them. We also saw a singular little animal, which has been called the Prairie Dog. Its size, shape and color, are very much the same as the large wharf rat, and its barking resembles that of the common Gray Squirrel. They burrow in the ground, and live in villages, frequently of several hundreds. There is a small Owl, that sometimes lives in the same hole with the Dog.

As we were now coming into the game country, and expecting every day to see the plains covered with herds of Buffalo; we made up a hunting party, (having previously joined one of the emigrating parties,) of 20 men, and proceeded up the river ahead of the wagons, to obtain meat and dry it by the time they would come up, in order to make as little detention as possible. In the evening of the second day, we heard the guns of some of the party, who were in chase of a Buffalo along the Southern side of the valley, and as we saw the clouds begin to swell, dark and angrily above the Western horizon, and heard their thunders muttering heavily behind the hills, we thought it prudent to halt and prepare our camp. As we saw no timber ahead, and did not wish to go back, we stopped upon the open prairie, on the nearest high ground to the River. The rain had begun to fall; but several of us, who were anxious to see the Buffalo, disregarding it, mounted our horses and galloped across the valley, in the direction from which we had heard the reports of the guns. The wind was blowing a gale; the clouds grew darker, until they almost shut out the light of the setting sun. The rain increased, and by the time we had reached the spot where the hunters were butchering, it poured down upon us as if all the windows of Heaven had been at once unbarred. The lightening and the thunder, was dimming to the eye and deafening to the ear; and, withal, it was certainly just as cold as it could be without the water congealing. “I never saw it rain before,” said a poor fellow, whose teeth were chattering together, in a manner that seemed to threaten the destruction of his masticators. “Nor I”—“nor I”—"nor I”—echoed half a dozen others, who were, as far as wet and cold were concerned, about in the same condition that they would have been, had they have been soaked an age in the Atlantic Ocean, and just hung out on the North Cape to dry. We made all possible haste; but, nevertheless, it was near two hours and growing quite dark, before we were ready to return to camp: and then we were so benumbed by the wet and cold, and encumbered with the meat which we