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Show Ltwis anll ClaJ•kt'& ~xpcdition whole village by Cameahwait, and an old man was pointed out who was said to know more of their geography to the north than any oth~rperson, and whom captain Clarke engagt'd to accompany h1m. After ex1>laining his views he distributed a few presents, the council was ended, and nearly half the village set out to hunt the antelope, but returned without succ ess. Captain Clarke in the meantime made particular in. quiries as to the situation of the country, and the possibility of so~n reaching a navigable water. The chief began by tlrawmg on the ground a delineation of the rivers from which it appeared that his information was very Ii'mited. The river on which the camp is he divided into two branches just above us, which, as he indicated by the opening of the ~ountains, were in view: he next made it discharge itselfmto a larger river ten miles below, coming from the southwest: the joint stream continued one day's march to the northwest, and then inclined to the westward for two day's march farther. At that place he placed sevcra] heaps of sanll on each side, whicl1, as he explained them, represent. e d vast mountains of rock always covered with snow ' in ~assmg th~ough which the river was so completely hemmed m by the h1gh rocks, that there was no possibility of travelling along the shore; that the bed of the river was obstructed by sharp-pointed rocks, and such its rapidity, that as far as the eye could reach it presented a perfect column of foam. The mountains he said were equally inaccessible, as neither man nor horse could cross them; that such being the state of the country neither he nor any of his nation had ever attempted to go beyond the mountains. Cameahwait said also that be had been informed by the Chopunnishf or piet·cednose Indians, who reside on this river west of the mountains, that it ran a great way towards the setting sun, and at length lost itself in a great lake of water which was ill· tasted, and where the white men lived. An Indian belonging to a band of Shoshonees who live to the southwest, and \Vho happened to be at camp, wai then brought in, and in- Uj' the JUissottl'i. 393 t1uirics made of him as to the situation of the country in that direction: this he described in tel'ms scarcely less terrible than those in which Cameahwait had rclwcscnted the west. lie said that his relations lived at the distance of twenty days' mat·ch from this place, on a course a little to the west of south and not far fr·om the whites, with whom they traded for horses, mules, cloth, metal, beads, and the shells here worn as ornaments, and which arc those of a species of pearl oyster. In order to reach his country we should he obliged dul"ing the fit·st seven days to climb over steep rocky mountains whe1·c thcr·e was no game, and we should find nothing IJut roots for subsistence. Even for these however we should be obliged to contend wit.h a fierce warlike people, whom be called tbe Broken-moccasin, or moceasin with boles, who lived like bears in holes, and fed on roots and the flesh of such horses as they could steal or plunder from those who passed through the mountains. So rough indeed was the pnssage, that the feet of the horses would be wounded in such a manner that many of them would be unable to proceed. The next part of the route was for ten days through a dry parched desert of sand. inhabited by uo animal which would supply us with subsistence, and as the sun had now scorched up the gt·ass and dried up the small pools of water which are sometimes scattered through this desert in the spring, both ourselves and our horses would perish for want of food and wate•·· About the middle ofthis plain a large river passes from southeast to northwest, which, though navigable. afforded neither timber uor salmon. 'l'hree or four days' march beyond this plain his relations lived, in a country tolerably fertile and partially covered with timber, on another large river running in the same direction as the former; that this last discharges itseir into a third large river, on which resilled many numerous nations, with whom his own were at war, but whether this last emptied itself into the great or stinking lake, as they called the ocean, he did not krto,v; that from his country to I VOL. J. 3 E |