been revenged, and intended to have scalp-dances and other triumphant
rejoicings. Captain Bonneville and his men, however, were by no means
disposed to renew their confiding intimacy with these crafty savages,
and above all, took care to avoid their pilfering caresses. They
remarked one precaution of the Crows with respect to their horses; to
protect their hoofs from the sharp and jagged rocks among which they had
to pass, they had covered them with shoes of buffalo hide.

The route of the travellers lay generally along the course of the
Nebraska or Platte, but occasionally, where steep promontories advanced
to the margin of the stream, they were obliged to make inland circuits.
One of these took them through a bold and stern country, bordered by a
range of low mountains, running east and west. Everything around bore
traces of some fearful convulsion of nature in times long past. Hitherto
the various strata of rock had exhibited a gentle elevation toward the
southwest, but here everything appeared to have been subverted, and
thrown out of place. In many places there were heavy beds of white
sandstone resting upon red. Immense strata of rocks jutted up into crags
and cliffs; and sometimes formed perpendicular walls and overhanging
precipices. An air of sterility prevailed over these savage wastes. The
valleys were destitute of herbage, and scantily clothed with a stunted
species of wormwood, generally known among traders and trappers by the
name of sage. From an elevated point of their march through this region,
the travellers caught a beautiful view of the Powder River Mountains
away to the north, stretching along the very verge of the horizon, and
seeming, from the snow with which they were mantled, to be a chain of
small white clouds, connecting sky and earth.

Though the thermometer at mid-day ranged from eighty to ninety, and even
sometimes rose to ninety-three degrees, yet occasional spots of snow