or subsistence, they collect great quantities
of seed, of various kinds, beaten with one hand out of the tops of the
plants into wooden bowls held for that purpose. The seed thus collected
is winnowed and parched, and ground between two stones into a kind of
meal or flour; which, when mixed with water, forms a very palatable
paste or gruel.

Some of these people, more provident and industrious than the rest, lay
up a stock of dried salmon, and other fish, for winter: with these, they
were ready to traffic with the travellers for any objects of utility in
Indian life; giving a large quantity in exchange for an awl, a knife,
or a fish-hook. Others were in the most abject state of want and
starvation; and would even gather up the fish-bones which the travellers
threw away after a repast, warm them over again at the fire, and pick
them with the greatest avidity.

The farther Captain Bonneville advanced into the country of these
Root Diggers, the more evidence he perceived of their rude and forlorn
condition. "They were destitute," says he, "of the necessary covering
to protect them from the weather; and seemed to be in the most
unsophisticated ignorance of any other propriety or advantage in the
use of clothing. One old dame had absolutely nothing on her person but a
thread round her neck, from which was pendant a solitary bead."

What stage of human destitution, however, is too destitute for vanity!
Though these naked and forlorn-looking beings had neither toilet to
arrange, nor beauty to contemplate, their greatest passion was for a
mirror. It was a "great medicine," in their eyes. The sight of one was
sufficient, at any time, to throw them into a paroxysm of eagerness and
delight; and they were ready to give anything they had for the smallest
fragment in which they might behold their squalid features. With this
simple instance of vanity, in its primitive but vigorous state, we shall
close our remarks on the Root Diggers.

30.

Temperature of the climate--Root Diggers on horseback--An
Indian guide--Mountain prospects--The Grand Rond--
Difficulties on Snake River--A scramble over the Blue
Mountains--Sufferings from hunger--Prospect of the Immahah
Valley--The exhausted traveller

THE TEMPERATURE of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains is much
milder than in the same latitudes on the Atlantic side; the upper
plains, however, which lie at a distance from the sea-coast, are
subject in