choice; how often were they not astonished at finding theillselves, one upon the croup, another on the neck, another among the hoofs, of their mules, without any clear idea of how they had come there, but thanking the God of the traveler that they had gotten off so easily. The same protection covered the horsemen; in the course of the journey, Father AIengarini had six tumbles and Father Point quite as many; once while riding at full gallop my horse fell and I flew over his head, and not one of us in these various occurrences received the least scratch.
We traveled in this manner for ten days, to reach Bear river, which flows through a wide and beautiful valley, surrounded by lofty mountains and often intersected by inaccessible rocks." We continued our march through it during eight successive clays. The river resembles in its course the form of a horseshoe, and falls into the Great Salt lake, which is about 300 miles in circumference, and has no communication with the sea. On our way, we met several families of Shoshones or Snake Indians, and Soshocos or Root-diggers. They speak the same language, and are both friends to the whites. The only difference we could observe between them was that the latter were by far the
poorer. They formed a grotesque group, such as is not to be seen in any other part of the Indian Territory. Represent to yourself a band of wretched horses, disproportionate in all their outlines, loaded with bags and boxes to a height equal to their own, and these surmounted by rational beings young and old, male and female, in a variety of figures and costumes, to which the pencil of a Hogarth or a Breugel could scarcely do justice, and you will have an idea of the
to In his itinerary from the Linton Album, Father De Smet says that his party traveled by way of Brown's Hole. Ile does not refer to it in his letters, though the time consumed in going from Green river to Bear river would make such a wide detour from the regular route possible. It is doubtful, however, if he went there, for, if he had, the remarkable natural beauty of this valley would not have escaped comment in his letters. This was two years before the founding of Fort Bridger.