Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/34



turned away and left him, taking a straight course for the Company, thinking it not very safe to be in the neighborhood of three hundred Sioux. We put spurs to our horses, and kept a good gait, until we considered that we were out of their reach. We arrrived at our Company's encampment that night, having killed nothing. When we told them of our adventure with the Sioux, all the Traders joined in exclaiming against us, for not killing him. We plead that it was unmanly, and unfair, to take the life even of the meanest enemy, under such circumstances; but they adopted the Indian argument, and said that as we were among Indians, we must treat them as they treated us; and so the white people, who live in the Mountains, act towards their enemies. On the evening of the 7th, we left the head of Sweet Water, and in a few hours passed over the dividing ridge, through the Grand Pass, and encamped by a marsh, which is one of the sources of Green River, a tributary of the Colorado, of the Gulf of California. We slept here, on the great Backbone of North America, where the sources of the Rivers which empty into the Oceans which bound it, on the East and on the West, are only a few miles apart. The lofty summits of the Wind River Mountains, with their wide fields of eternal snow, appeared to be almost beside us. We had a heavy frost during the night, and in the morning, the water in our camp kettles was covered with ice nealy one fourth of an inch thick; and every thing that had been exposed to the dew, which fell in the evening, was perfectly glazed with ice. Both the ascent and descent, were so gradual, that, had we not been told, we should have passed over the dividing ridge, in the Rocky Mountains, without knowing it. The distance from our crossing of the North Fork of the Platte, to the summit of the Grand Pass, is one hundred and fifty four miles; and the country between, is a perfect desert. 28 (CHAIDTIER