ght green waters. The three snowy summits of the
Pilot Knobs or Tetons were still seen towering in the distance. After
pursuing a swift but placid course for twenty miles, the current began
to foam and brawl, and assume the wild and broken character common to
the streams west of the Rocky Mountains. In fact the rivers which flow
from those mountains to the Pacific are essentially different from those
which traverse the prairies on their eastern declivities. The latter,
though sometimes boisterous, are generally free from obstructions, and
easily navigated; but the rivers to the west of the mountains descend
more steeply and impetuously, and are continually liable to cascades
and rapids. The latter abounded in the part of the river which the
travellers were now descending. Two of the canoes filled among the
breakers; the crews were saved, but much of the lading was lost or
damaged, and one of the canoes drifted down the stream and was broken
among the rocks.

On the following day, October 21st, they made but a short distance when
they came to a dangerous strait, where the river was compressed for
nearly half a mile between perpendicular rocks, reducing it to the width
of twenty yards, and increasing its violence. Here they were obliged to
pass the canoes down cautiously by a line from the impending banks. This
consumed a great part of a day; and after they had reembarked they were
soon again impeded by rapids, when they had to unload their canoes and
carry them and their cargoes for some distance by land. It is at these
places, called "portages," that the Canadian voyageur exhibits his most
valuable qualities; carrying heavy burdens, and toiling to and fro,
on land and in the water, over rocks and precipices, among brakes and
brambles, not only without a murmur, but with the greatest cheerfulness
and alacrity, joking and laughing and singing scraps of old French
ditties.

The spirits of the party, however, which had been elated on first
varying their journeying from land to water, had now lost some of their
buoyancy. Everything ahead was wrapped in uncertainty. They knew nothing
of the river on which they were floating. It had never been navigated
by a white man, nor could they meet with an Indian to give them
any information concerning it. It kept on its course through a vast
wilderness of silent and apparently uninhabited mountains, without a
savage wigwam upon its banks, or bark upon its waters. The difficulties
and