Mr. Hunt was in a dismal dilemma.  To attempt the mountains without a guide would be certain death to him and all his people; to remain there, after having already been so long on the journey, and at such great expense, was worse to him, he said, than two “deaths.”  He now changed his tone with the Indians, charged them with deceiving him in respect to the mountains, and talking with a “forked tongue,” or, in other words, with lying.  He upbraided them with their want of courage, and told them they were women, to shrink from the perils of such a journey.  At length one of them, piqued by his taunts, or tempted by his offers, agreed to be his guide; for which he was to receive a gun, a pistol, three knives, two horses, and a little of every article in possession of the party; a reward sufficient to make him one of the wealthiest of his vagabond nation.

Once more, then, on the 21st of December, they set out upon their wayfaring, with newly excited spirits.  Two other Indians accompanied their guide, who led them immediately back to Snake River, which they followed down for a short distance, in search of some Indian rafts made of reeds, on which they might cross.  Finding none, Mr. Hunt caused a horse to be killed, and a canoe to be made out of its skin.  Here, on the opposite bank, they saw the thirteen men of Mr. Crooks’s party, who had continued up along the river.  They told Mr. Hunt, across the stream, that they had not seen Mr. Crooks, and the two men who had remained with him, since the day that he had separated from them.

The canoe proving too small, another horse was killed, and the skin of it joined to that of the first.  Night came on before the little bark had made more than two voyages.  Being badly made it was taken apart and put together again, by the light of the fire.  The night was cold; the men were weary and disheartened with such varied and incessant toil and hardship.  They crouched, dull and drooping, around their fires; many of them began to express a wish to remain where they were for the winter.  The very necessity of crossing the river dismayed some of them in their present enfeebled and dejected state.  It was rapid and turbulent, and filled with floating ice, and they remembered that two of their comrades had already perished in its waters.  Others looked forward with misgivings to the long and dismal journey through lonesome regions that awaited them, when they should have passed this dreary flood.

At an early hour of the morning, December 23d, they began to cross the river.  Much ice had formed during the night, and they were obliged to break it for some distance on each shore.  At length they all got over in safety to the west side; and their spirits rose on having achieved this perilous passage.  Here they were rejoined by the people of Mr. Crooks, who had with them a horse and a dog, which they had recently procured.  The poor fellows were in the most squalid and emaciated state.  Three of them