We now wound through the hills and mountains,
passing several rivulets which ran to the right, and at the distance
of nine miles from the gap encamped, having made thirty-two miles. We
procured some beaver, and this morning saw tracks of buffalo, from which
it appears that those animals do sometimes penetrate a short distance
among the mountains."
Next day the party found themselves in clover, so to speak. Game was
plenty, and, as their object now was to accumulate meat for the three
men who were to be left at the falls (and who were not hunters), they
resolved to strike the Medicine, or Sun, River and hunt down its banks.
On that river the journal, July 10, has this to say:--
"In the plains are great quantities of two species of prickly-pear now
in bloom. Gooseberries of the common red kind are in abundance and just
beginning to ripen, but there are no currants. The river has now widened
to one hundred yards; it is deep, crowded with islands, and in many
parts rapid. At the distance of seventeen miles, the timber disappears
totally from the river-bottoms. About this part of the river, the wind,
which had blown on our backs, and constantly put the elk on their guard,
shifted round; we then shot three of them and a brown bear. Captain
Lewis halted to skin them, while two of the men took the pack-horses
forward to seek for a camp. It was nine o'clock before he overtook them,
at the distance of seven miles, in the first grove of cottonwood. They
had been pursued as they came along by a very large bear, on which they
were afraid to fire, lest their horses, being unaccustomed to the gun,
might take fright and throw them.
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