among the rocks and
cliffs; their eager curiosity being somewhat dashed with fear. From
their elevated posts, they scrutinized the strangers with the most
intense earnestness; regarding them with almost as much awe as if they
had been beings of a supernatural order.

The men, however, were by no means so shy and reserved; but importuned
Captain Bonneville and his companions excessively by their curiosity.
Nothing escaped their notice; and any thing they could lay their hands
on underwent the most minute examination. To get rid of such inquisitive
neighbors, the travellers kept on for a considerable distance, before
they encamped for the night.

The country, hereabout, was generally level and sandy; producing very
little grass, but a considerable quantity of sage or wormwood. The
plains were diversified by isolated hills, all cut off, as it were,
about the same height, so as to have tabular summits. In this they
resembled the isolated hills of the great prairies, east of the Rocky
Mountains; especially those found on the plains of the Arkansas.

The high precipices which had hitherto walled in the channel of Snake
River had now disappeared; and the banks were of the ordinary height. It
should be observed, that the great valleys or plains, through which the
Snake River wound its course, were generally of great breadth, extending
on each side from thirty to forty miles; where the view was bounded by
unbroken ridges of mountains.

The travellers found but little snow in the neighborhood of Powder
River, though the weather continued intensely cold. They learned a
lesson, however, from their forlorn friends, the Root Diggers, which
they subsequently found of great service in their wintry wanderings.
They frequently observed them to be furnished with long ropes, twisted
from the bark of the wormwood. This they used as a slow match, carrying
it always lighted. Whenever they wished to warm themselves, they would
gather together a little dry wormwood, apply the match, and in an
instant produce a cheering blaze.

Captain Bonneville gives a cheerless account of a village of these
Diggers, which he saw in crossing the plain below Powder River. "They
live," says he, "without any further protection from the inclemency
of the season, than a sort of break-weather, about three feet high,
composed of sage (or wormwood), and erected around them in the shape
of a half moon." Whenever he met with them, however, they had always a
large