t; for his part, he could provide his daily bread with his
rifle. He concluded by flinging off from the party, and keeping along
the skirts of the mountain, leaving those, he said, to climb rocks, who
were afraid to face Indians. It was in vain that Mr. Stuart represented
to him the rashness of his conduct, and the dangers to which he exposed
himself: he rejected such counsel as craven. It was equally useless to
represent the dangers to which he subjected his companions; as he
could be discovered at a great distance on those naked plains, and
the Indians, seeing him, would know that there must be other white men
within reach. M'Lellan turned a deaf ear to every remonstrance, and kept
on his wilful way.

It seemed a strange instance of perverseness in this man thus to fling
himself off alone, in a savage region, where solitude itself was dismal,
and every encounter with his fellow-man full of peril. Such, however, is
the hardness of spirit, and the insensibility to danger that grow
upon men in the wilderness. M'Lellan, moreover, was a man of peculiar
temperament, ungovernable in his will, of a courage that absolutely knew
no fear, and somewhat of a braggart spirit, that took a pride in doing
desperate and hair-brained things.

Mr. Stuart and his party found the passages of the mountain somewhat
difficult, on account of the snow, which in many places was of
considerable depth, though it was but the 1st of October. They crossed
the summit early in the afternoon, and beheld below them, a plain
about twenty miles wide, bounded on the opposite side by their old
acquaintances, the Pilot Knobs, those towering mountains which had
served Mr. Hunt as landmarks in part of his route of the preceding year.
Through the intermediate plain wandered a river about fifty yards wide,
sometimes gleaming in open day, but oftener running through willowed
banks, which marked its serpentine course.

Those of the party who had been across these mountains, pointed out much
of the bearings of the country to Mr. Stuart. They showed him in what
direction must lie the deserted post called Henry's Fort, where they
had abandoned their horses and embarked in canoes, and they informed him
that the stream which wandered through the plain below them, fell into
Henry River, half way between the fort and the mouth of Mad or Snake
River. The character of all this mountain region was decidedly volcanic;
and to the northwest, between Henry's Fort and the sourc