on the mountains and
cut off their retreat. By hastening their return, they would be able to
reach the Blue Mountains just in time to find the elk, the deer, and the
bighorn; and after they had supplied themselves with provisions, they
might push through the mountains before they were entirely blocked by
snow. Influenced by these considerations, Captain Bonneville reluctantly
turned his back a second time on the Columbia, and set off for the Blue
Mountains. He took his course up John Day's River, so called from one
of the hunters in the original Astorian enterprise. As famine was at
his heels, he travelled fast, and reached the mountains by the 1st of
October. He entered by the opening made by John Day's River; it was a
rugged and difficult defile, but he and his men had become accustomed
to hard scrambles of the kind. Fortunately, the September rains had
extinguished the fires which recently spread over these regions; and the
mountains, no longer wrapped in smoke, now revealed all their grandeur
and sublimity to the eye.

They were disappointed in their expectation of finding abundant game in
the mountains; large bands of the natives had passed through, returning
from their fishing expeditions, and had driven all the game before them.
It was only now and then that the hunters could bring in sufficient to
keep the party from starvation.

To add to their distress, they mistook their route, and wandered for
ten days among high and bald hills of clay. At length, after much
perplexity, they made their way to the banks of Snake River, following
the course of which, they were sure to reach their place of destination.

It was the 20th of October when they found themselves once more upon
this noted stream. The Shoshokoes, whom they had met with in such scanty
numbers on their journey down the river, now absolutely thronged its
banks to profit by the abundance of salmon, and lay up a stock for
winter provisions. Scaffolds were everywhere erected, and immense
quantities of fish drying upon them. At this season of the year,
however, the salmon are extremely poor, and the travellers needed their
keen sauce of hunger to give them a relish.

In some places the shores were completely covered with a stratum of dead
salmon, exhausted in ascending the river, or destroyed at the falls; the
fetid odor of which tainted the air.

It was not until the travellers reached the head-waters of the Portneuf
that they really found themselves in