savage and darkly wooded defiles,
when all at once the whole landscape changed, as if by magic. The
rude mountains and rugged ravines softened into beautiful hills, and
intervening meadows, with rivulets winding through fresh herbage, and
sparkling and murmuring over gravelly beds, the whole forming a verdant
and pastoral scene, which derived additional charms from being locked up
in the bosom of such a hard-hearted region.

Emerging from the chain of Blue Mountains, they descended upon a vast
plain, almost a dead level, sixty miles in circumference, Of excellent
soil, with fine streams meandering through it in every direction,
their courses marked out in the wide landscape by serpentine lines of
cotton-wood trees, and willows, which fringed their banks, and afforded
sustenance to great numbers of beavers and otters.

In traversing this plain, they passed, close to the skirts of the hills,
a great pool of water, three hundred yards in circumference, fed by a
sulphur spring, about ten feet in diameter, boiling up in one corner.
The vapor from this pool was extremely noisome, and tainted the air for
a considerable distance. The place was much frequented by elk, which
were found in considerable numbers in the adjacent mountains, and their
horns, shed in the spring-time, were strewed in every direction around
the pond.

On the 10th of August, they reached the main body of Woodvile Creek, the
same stream which Mr. Hunt had ascended in the preceding year, shortly
after his separation from Mr. Crooks.

On the banks of this stream they saw a herd of nineteen antelopes; a
sight so unusual in that part of the country, that at first they doubted
the evidence of their senses. They tried by every means to get within
shot of them, but they were too shy and fleet, and after alternately
bounding to a distance, and then stopping to gaze with capricious
curiosity at the hunter, they at length scampered out of sight.

On the 12th of August, the travellers arrived on the banks of Snake
River, the scene of so many trials and mishaps to all of the present
party excepting Mr. Stuart. They struck the river just above the place
where it entered the mountains, through which Messrs. Stuart and Crooks
had vainly endeavored to find a passage. The river was here a rapid
stream, four hundred yards in width, with high sandy banks, and here and
there a scanty growth of willow. Up the southern side of the river they
now bent their course, intending