which had evidently passed through that neighborhood but recently. The
horse was accordingly taken possession of, as an estray; but a more
vigilant watch than usual was kept round the camp at nights, lest his
former owners should be upon the prowl.

The travellers had now attained so high an elevation that on the 23d of
July, at daybreak, there was considerable ice in the waterbuckets,
and the thermometer stood at twenty-two degrees. The rarefy of the
atmosphere continued to affect the wood-work of the wagons, and the
wheels were incessantly falling to pieces. A remedy was at length
devised. The tire of each wheel was taken off; a band of wood was nailed
round the exterior of the felloes, the tire was then made red hot,
replaced round the wheel, and suddenly cooled with water. By this means,
the whole was bound together with great compactness.

The extreme elevation of these great steppes, which range along the
feet of the Rocky Mountains, takes away from the seeming height of their
peaks, which yield to few in the known world in point of altitude above
the level of the sea.

On the 24th, the travellers took final leave of the Sweet Water, and
keeping westwardly, over a low and very rocky ridge, one of the most
southern spurs of the Wind River Mountains, they encamped, after a march
of seven hours and a half, on the banks of a small clear stream, running
to the south, in which they caught a number of fine trout.

The sight of these fish was hailed with pleasure, as a sign that they
had reached the waters which flow into the Pacific; for it is only on
the western streams of the Rocky Mountains that trout are to be taken.
The stream on which they had thus encamped proved, in effect, to be