fortification was thrown up for the protection of the party; a secure
and comfortable pen, into which the horses could be driven at night; and
huts were built for the reception of the merchandise.

This done, Captain Bonneville made a distribution of his forces: twenty
men were to remain with him in garrison to protect the property; the
rest were organized into three brigades, and sent off in different
directions, to subsist themselves by hunting the buffalo, until the snow
should become too deep.

Indeed, it would have been impossible to provide for the whole party in
this neighborhood. It was at the extreme western limit of the buffalo
range, and these animals had recently been completely hunted out of the
neighborhood by the Nez Perces, so that, although the hunters of the
garrison were continually on the alert, ranging the country round, they
brought in scarce game sufficient to keep famine from the door. Now
and then there was a scanty meal of fish or wild-fowl, occasionally an
antelope; but frequently the cravings of hunger had to be appeased with
roots, or the flesh of wolves and muskrats. Rarely could the inmates
of the cantonment boast of having made a full meal, and never of having
wherewithal for the morrow. In this way they starved along until the
8th of October, when they were joined by a party of five families of Nez
Perces, who in some measure reconciled them to the hardships of their
situation by exhibiting a lot still more destitute. A more forlorn set
they had never encountered: they had not a morsel of meat or fish; nor
anything to subsist on, excepting roots, wild rosebuds, the barks of
certain plants, and other vegetable production; neither had they any
weapon for hunting or defence, excepting an old spear: yet the poor
fellows made no murmur nor complaint; but seemed accustomed to their
hard fare. If they could not teach the white men their practical