hope of relief from them would be to
run the risk of perishing with hunger. Besides, the winter was rapidly
advancing, and they had a long journey to make through an unknown
country, where all kinds of perils might await them. They were yet, in
fact, a thousand miles from Astoria, but the distance was unknown
to them at the time: everything before and around them was vague and
conjectural, and wore an aspect calculated to inspire despondency.

In abandoning the river, they would have to launch forth upon vast
trackless plains destitute of all means of subsistence, where they might
perish of hunger and thirst. A dreary desert of sand and gravel extends
from Snake River almost to the Columbia. Here and there is a thin and
scanty herbage, insufficient for the pasturage of horse or buffalo.
Indeed, these treeless wastes between the Rocky Mountains and the
Pacific are even more desolate and barren than the naked, upper prairies
on the Atlantic side; they present vast desert tracts that must ever
defy cultivation, and interpose dreary and thirsty wilds between the
habitations of man, in traversing which the wanderer will often be in
danger of perishing.

Seeing the hopeless character of these wastes, Mr. Hunt and his
companions determined to keep along the course of the river, where
they would always have water at hand, and would be able occasionally
to procure fish and beaver, and might perchance meet with Indians, from
whom they could obtain provisions.

They now made their final preparations for the march. All their
remaining stock of provisions consisted of forty pounds of Indian corn,
twenty pounds of grease, about five pounds of portable soup, and a
sufficient quantity of dried meat to allow each man a pittance of
five pounds and a quarter, to be reserved for emergencies. This being
properly distributed, they deposited all their goods and superfluous
articles in the caches, taking nothing with them but what was
indispensable to the journey. With all their management, each man had to
carry twenty pounds' weight besides his own articles and equipments.

That they might have the better chance of procuring subsistence in the
scanty region they were to traverse, they divided their party into
two bands. Mr. Hunt, with eighteen men, besides Pierre Dorion and his
family, was to proceed down the north side of the river, while Mr.
Crooks, with eighteen men, kept along the south side.

On the morning of the 9th of October, th