throughout the night, taking turns to watch and steer. The deep stillness of the night wasoccasionally interrupted by the neighing of the elk, the hoarse lowing of the buffalo, the hootingof
large owls, and the screeching of the small ones, now and then the splash of a beaver, or thegonglike
sound of the swan.
Part of their voyage was extremely tempestuous; with high winds, tremendous thunder, andsoaking
rain; and they were repeatedly in extreme danger from drift-wood and sunken trees. On oneoccasion, having continued to float at night, after the moon was down, they ran under a greatsnag,
or sunken tree, with dry branches above the water. These caught the mast, while the boat swunground, broadside to the stream, and began to fill with water. Nothing saved her from total wreck,but
cutting away the mast. She then drove down the stream, but left one of the unlucky half-breedsclinging to the snag, like a monkey to a pole. It was necessary to run in shore, toil up,laboriously,
along the eddies and to attain some distance above the snag, when they launched forth again intothe
stream and floated down with it to his rescue.
We forbear to detail all the circumstances and adventures of upward of a months voyage,down the
windings and doublings of this vast river; in the course of which they stopped occasionally at apost
of one of the rival fur companies, or at a government agency for an Indian tribe. Neither shall wedwell upon the changes of climate and productions, as the voyagers swept down from north tosouth,
across several degrees of latitude; arriving at the regions of oaks and sycamores; of mulberry andbasswood trees; of paroquets and wild turkeys. This is one of the characteristics of the middleand
lower part of the Missouri; but still more so of the Mississippi, whose rapid current traverses asuccession of latitudes so as in a few days to float the voyager almost from the frozen regions tothe
tropics.
The voyage of Wyeth shows the regular and unobstructed flow of the rivers, on the east sideof the
Rocky Mountains, in contrast to those of the western side; where rocks and rapids continuallymenace and obstruct the voyager. We find him in a frail bark of skins, launching himself in astream
at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and floating down from river to river, as they emptythemselves
into each other; and so he might have kept on upward of two thousand miles, until his little barkshould drift into the ocean. At present we shall stop with him at Cantonment Leavenworth, thefrontier post of the United States; where he arrived on the 27th of September.
Here his first care was to have his Nez Perce Indian, and his half-breed boy, Baptiste,vaccinated.
As they approached the fort, they were hailed by the sentinel. The sight of a soldier in full array,with
what appeared to be a long knife glittering on the end of a musket, struck Baptiste with suchaffright
that he took to his heels, bawling for mercy at the top of his voice. The Nez Perce would havefollowed him, had not Wyeth assured him of his safety. When they underwent the operation ofthe
lancet, the doctor's wife and another lady were present; both beautiful women. They were thefirst
white women that they had seen, and they could not keep their eyes off of them. On returning tothe
boat, they recounted to their companions all that they had observed at the fort; but wereespecially
eloquent about the white squaws, who, they said, were white as snow, and more beautiful thanany
human being they had ever beheld.
We shall not accompany the captain any further in his Voyage; but will simply state that hemade
his way to Boston, where he succeeded in organizing an association under the name of "TheColumbia River Fishing and Trading Company," for his original objects of a salmon fishery anda
trade in furs. A brig, the May Dacres, had been dispatched for the Columbia withsupplies; and he
was now on his way to the same point, at the head of sixty men, whom he had enlisted at St.
Louis;
some of whom were experienced hunters, and all more habituated to the life of the wildernessthan
his first band of "down-easters."
We will now return to Captain Bonneville and his party, whom we left, making up theirpacks and
saddling their horses, in Bear River Valley. [Return to Contents].
