Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/40



be found among the dregs of human nature. We have been told, that during the Salmon season, they become as fat as penned pigs; and in the winter, so poor and feeble, that they frequently die from actual starvation. After leaving the Salmon Falls, we traveled down near the river, our path frequently leading us along the sides of the almost perpendicular bluffs. Twenty-seven miles below the Salmon Falls, we came to the crossing; where the companies, which preceded us, had passed over to the North side, which is much the nearest and best way; but we, having attempted the crossing and finding it too deep, were obliged to continue down on the South. This is, perhaps, the most rugged, desert, and dreary country, between the Western borders of the United States, and the shores of the Pacific. It is nothing else, than a wild, rocky, barren wilderness, of wrecked and ruined Nature; a vast field of volcanic desolation. Beyond the Mountains, which rise on the South of this point, is the great Salt Lake. Eighty-eight miles below the crossing of Snake River, we crossed two small branches of hot water. This region appears once to have been a high, level plain which seems to have been overflowed from the East, by a vast flood of lava. –We were led to this conclusion, from noticing that the basaltic layer, which covers the surface of the hills, (the summit of the hills being nearly on the same level,) decreases in thickness, as we proceed down the River, until it gives out entirely; and the sandy base, which composes the hills seems to have given away to the action of time, until these table hills are but the fragments of the vast wreck. In these deserts we found the Horned Toad, and a kind of Lizard, which is about eight inches in length, of a grayish color, slenderly proportioned, very swift, and apparently inoffensive. Thirty-two miles below the Hot Branches, we crossed the Owyhe River, traveled down it two miles, and came opposite Fort Boise, which is situated on the North side of Snake River, a short distance below the confluence of the Owyhe and Boise; the latter of which, comes in from the North. There is, on the Boise River, a great deal of Cotton Wood timber; from which circumstance, it takes its name. From the crossing of Snake River, to where it passes though the Blue Mountains, there seems to be no Falls or dangerous Rapids. At Fort Boise, part of our company which came from Fort Hall, in hopes of procuring provisions, with the intention of going across into California, having obtained small supply, and the best directions they could get concerning the route, from Captain Payette, the and descended to the Umatila or Utilla river, (generally called in that country, the Utilla,) in the valley of Walawala. From the brow of the Mountain, we had a fine view of the Cascade range, fifty miles distant, forming the Western boundary of the valley, stretching far to the North and South, with its lofty peaks of eternal snow rising among the clouds. The extent of the Walawala valley, is not known; but it is probably three hundred miles long, with an average width of about fifty miles. Its course, from and below the junction of Snake River, is nearly South; above, it bends away to the East. The Columbia River runs through it to the Dales; where it leaves the valley, and breaks through the Cascade Mountains. This valley, is elevated above the Columbia, from fifty to five hundred feet, and is very uneven, dry, sandy, and entirely unfit for cultivation, except along the base of the Mountains, and immediately on the smaller streams which run through it; the