The men, however, were by no means so shy and reserved; but importuned Captain Bonneville and his companions excessively by their curiosity.  Nothing escaped their notice; and any thing they could lay their hands on underwent the most minute examination.  To get rid of such inquisitive neighbors, the travellers kept on for a considerable distance, before they encamped for the night.

The country, hereabout, was generally level and sandy; producing very little grass, but a considerable quantity of sage or wormwood.  The plains were diversified by isolated hills, all cut off, as it were, about the same height, so as to have tabular summits.  In this they resembled the isolated hills of the great prairies, east of the Rocky Mountains; especially those found on the plains of the Arkansas.

The high precipices which had hitherto walled in the channel of Snake River had now disappeared; and the banks were of the ordinary height.  It should be observed, that the great valleys or plains, through which the Snake River wound its course, were generally of great breadth, extending on each side from thirty to forty miles; where the view was bounded by unbroken ridges of mountains.

The travellers found but little snow in the neighborhood of Powder River, though the weather continued intensely cold.  They learned a lesson, however, from their forlorn friends, the Root Diggers, which they subsequently found of great service in their wintry wanderings.  They frequently observed them to be furnished with long ropes, twisted from the bark of the wormwood.  This they used as a slow match, carrying it always lighted.  Whenever they wished to warm themselves, they would gather together a little dry wormwood, apply the match, and in an instant produce a cheering blaze.

Captain Bonneville gives a cheerless account of a village of these Diggers, which he saw in crossing the plain below Powder River.  “They live,” says he, “without any further protection from the inclemency of the season, than a sort of break-weather, about three feet high, composed of sage (or wormwood), and erected around them in the shape of a half moon.”  Whenever he met with them, however, they had always a large suite of half-starved dogs:  for these animals, in savage as well as in civilized life, seem to be the concomitants of beggary.

These dogs, it must be allowed, were of more use than the beggary curs of cities.  The Indian children used them in hunting the small game of the neighborhood, such as rabbits and prairie dogs; in which mongrel kind of chase they acquitted themselves with some credit.