ascades, and tumbling into the plain where, expanding into an ample
river, it circled away to the south, and after alternately shining out
and disappearing in the mazes of the vast landscape, was finally lost
in a horizon of mountains. The day was calm and cloudless, and the
atmosphere so pure that objects were discernible at an astonishing
distance. The whole of this immense area was inclosed by an outer range
of shadowy peaks, some of them faintly marked on the horizon, which
seemed to wall it in from the rest of the earth.

It is to be regretted that Captain Bonneville had no instruments with
him with which to ascertain the altitude of this peak. He gives it
as his opinion that it is the loftiest point of the North American
continent; but of this we have no satisfactory proof. It is certain
that the Rocky Mountains are of an altitude vastly superior to what was
formerly supposed. We rather incline to the opinion that the highest
peak is further to the northward, and is the same measured by Mr.
Thompson, surveyor to the Northwest Company; who, by the joint means
of the barometer and trigonometric measurement, ascertained it to be
twenty-five thousand feet above the level of the sea; an elevation only
inferior to that of the Himalayas.

For a long time, Captain Bonneville remained gazing around him with
wonder and enthusiasm; at length the chill and wintry winds, whirling
about the snow-clad height, admonished him to descend. He soon regained
the spot where he and his companions [companion] had thrown off their
coats, which were now gladly resumed, and, retracing their course down
the peak, they safely rejoined their companions on the border of the
lake.

Notwithstanding the savage and almost inaccessible nature of these
mountains, they have their inhabitants. As one of the party was out
hunting, he came upon the solitary track of a man in a lonely valley.
Following it up, he reached the brow of a cliff, whence he beheld three
savages running across the valley below him. He fired his gun to call
their attention, hoping to induce them to turn back. They only fled
the faster, and disappeared among the rocks. The hunter returned and
reported what he had seen. Captain Bonneville at once concluded that
these belonged to a kind of hermit race, scanty in number, that inhabit
the highest and most inaccessible fastnesses. They speak the Shoshonie
language, and probably are offsets from that tribe, though they have
peculiarit