ble,
and appeared to be well disposed, and as they spoke the Nez Perce
language, an intercourse was easily kept up with them.

In the pastures on the bank of this stream, Captain Bonneville encamped
for a time, for the purpose of recruiting the strength of his horses.
Scouts were now sent out to explore the surrounding country, and search
for a convenient pass through the mountains toward the Wallamut or
Multnomah. After an absence of twenty days they returned weary and
discouraged. They had been harassed and perplexed in rugged mountain
defiles, where their progress was continually impeded by rocks and
precipices. Often they had been obliged to travel along the edges of
frightful ravines, where a false step would have been fatal. In one of
these passes, a horse fell from the brink of a precipice, and would have
been dashed to pieces had he not lodged among the branches of a tree,
from which he was extricated with great difficulty. These, however, were
not the worst of their difficulties and perils. The great conflagration
of the country, which had harassed the main party in its march, was
still more awful the further this exploring party proceeded. The flames
which swept rapidly over the light vegetation of the prairies assumed
a fiercer character and took a stronger hold amid the wooded glens and
ravines of the mountains. Some of the deep gorges and defiles sent up
sheets of flame, and clouds of lurid smoke, and sparks and cinders that
in the night made them resemble the craters of volcanoes. The groves and
forests, too, which crowned the cliffs, shot up their towering columns
of fire, and added to the furnace glow of the mountains. With these
stupendous sights were combined the rushing blasts caused by the
rarefied air, which roared and howled through the narrow glens, and
whirled forth the smoke and flames in impetuous wreaths. Ever and anon,
too, was heard the crash of falling trees, sometimes tumbling from crags
and precipices, with tremendous sounds.

In the daytime, the mountains were wrapped in smoke so dense and
blinding, that the explorers, if by chance they separated, could only
find each other by shouting. Often, too, they had to grope their way
through the yet burning forests, in constant peril from the limbs and
trunks of trees, which frequently fell across their path. At length
they gave up the attempt to find a pass as hopeless, under actual
circumstances, and made their way back to the camp to report