and powerful monopoly.  If they reached the Wallamut, they could scarcely hope to obtain sufficient supplies for the winter; if they lingered any longer in the country the snows would gather upon the mountains and cut off their retreat.  By hastening their return, they would be able to reach the Blue Mountains just in time to find the elk, the deer, and the bighorn; and after they had supplied themselves with provisions, they might push through the mountains before they were entirely blocked by snow.  Influenced by these considerations, Captain Bonneville reluctantly turned his back a second time on the Columbia, and set off for the Blue Mountains.  He took his course up John Day’s River, so called from one of the hunters in the original Astorian enterprise.  As famine was at his heels, he travelled fast, and reached the mountains by the 1st of October.  He entered by the opening made by John Day’s River; it was a rugged and difficult defile, but he and his men had become accustomed to hard scrambles of the kind.  Fortunately, the September rains had extinguished the fires which recently spread over these regions; and the mountains, no longer wrapped in smoke, now revealed all their grandeur and sublimity to the eye.

They were disappointed in their expectation of finding abundant game in the mountains; large bands of the natives had passed through, returning from their fishing expeditions, and had driven all the game before them.  It was only now and then that the hunters could bring in sufficient to keep the party from starvation.

To add to their distress, they mistook their route, and wandered for ten days among high and bald hills of clay.  At length, after much perplexity, they made their way to the banks of Snake River, following the course of which, they were sure to reach their place of destination.

It was the 20th of October when they found themselves once more upon this noted stream.  The Shoshokoes, whom they had met with in such scanty numbers on their journey down the river, now absolutely thronged its banks to profit by the abundance of salmon, and lay up a stock for winter provisions.  Scaffolds were everywhere erected, and immense quantities of fish drying upon them.  At this season of the year, however, the salmon are extremely poor, and the travellers needed their keen sauce of hunger to give them a relish.

In some places the shores were completely covered with a stratum of dead salmon, exhausted in ascending the river, or destroyed at the falls; the fetid odor of which tainted the air.

It was not until the travellers reached the head-waters of the Portneuf that they really found themselves in a region of abundance.  Here the buffaloes were in immense herds; and here they remained for three days, slaying and cooking, and feasting, and indemnifying themselves by an enormous carnival, for a long and hungry Lent.  Their horses, too, found good pasturage, and enjoyed a little rest after a severe spell of hard travelling.