s for their peltries. The poor Snakes soon comprehended the
advantages thus held out to them, and promised to exert themselves to
procure a quantity of beaver skins for future traffic. Being now well
supplied with provisions, Mr. Hunt broke up his encampment on the 24th
of September, and continued on to the west. A march of fifteen miles,
over a mountain ridge, brought them to a stream about fifty feet in
width, which Hoback, one of their guides, who had trapped about the
neighborhood when in the service of Mr. Henry, recognized for one of the
head waters of the Columbia. The travellers hailed it with delight,
as the first stream they had encountered tending toward their point of
destination. They kept along it for two days, during which, from the
contribution of many rills and brooks, it gradually swelled into a small
river. As it meandered among rocks and precipices, they were frequently
obliged to ford it, and such was its rapidity that the men were often in
danger of being swept away. Sometimes the banks advanced so close upon
the river that they were obliged to scramble up and down their rugged
promontories, or to skirt along their bases where there was scarce a
foothold. Their horses had dangerous falls in some of these passes. One
of them rolled, with his load, nearly two hundred feet down hill into
the river, but without receiving any injury. At length they emerged from
these stupendous defiles, and continued for several miles along the bank
of Hoback's River, through one of the stern mountain valleys. Here it
was joined by a river of greater magnitude and swifter current, and
their united waters swept off through the valley in one impetuous
stream, which, from its rapidity and turbulence, had received the name
of the Mad River. At the confluence of these streams the travellers
encamped. An important point in their arduous journey had been attained;
a few miles from their camp rose the three vast snowy peaks called the
Tetons, or the Pilot Knobs, the great landmarks of the Columbia, by
which they had shaped their course through this mountain wilderness. By
their feet flowed the rapid current of Mad River, a stream ample enough
to admit of the navigation of canoes, and down which they might possibly
be able to steer their course to the main body of the Columbia.
The Canadian voyageurs rejoiced at the idea of once more launching
themselves upon their favorite element; of exchanging their horses for
canoes, and of gl