After the sun has been on it for
some hours it becomes softer than it is early in the morning; yet they
are almost always able to get a sure foothold."
On the twenty-ninth of June the party were well out of the snows in
which they had been imprisoned, although they were by no means over the
mountain barrier that had been climbed so painfully during the past few
days. Here they observed the tracks of two barefooted Indians who had
evidently been fleeing from their enemies, the Pahkees. These signs
disturbed the Indian guides, for they at once said that the tracks were
made by their friends, the Ootlashoots, and that the Pahkees would
also cut them (the guides) off on their return from the trip over the
mountains. On the evening of the day above mentioned, the party camped
at the warm springs which fall into Traveller's-rest Creek, a point
now well known to the explorers, who had passed that way before. Of the
springs the journal says:--
"These warm springs are situated at the foot of a hill on the north side
of Traveller's-rest Creek, which is ten yards wide at this place. They
issue from the bottoms, and through the interstices of a gray freestone
rock, which rises in irregular masses round their lower side. The
principal spring, which the Indians have formed into a bath by stopping
the run with stone and pebbles, is about the same temperature as the
warmest bath used at the hot springs in Virginia. On trying, Captain
Lewis could with difficulty remain in it nineteen minutes, and then was
affected with a profuse perspiration.
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