to the urgent solicitations of the Ceeur d'Alenes, the more readily that the season seemed still to permit the passage of the lofty mountain-range which separates them from the Flatheads. The three Cc-cur D'Alene deputies and two of the Kalispels accompanied me. The day was fine and the trail easy; toward noon we skirted a beautiful little lake, which I named De Nef, in memory of one of the great friends and benefactors of the mission.
On the Loth, the sun rose majestically and everything promised a fine day; but all these fair appearances disappeared in threatening reddish clouds, and soon after the first snow began to fall in great flakes, and the rain that followed soaked us to the skin. We crossed the Spokan river at the foot of the great rapids, and kept the road until sunset. It rained heavily, but the stream-beds in the elevated plain that we had to cross were still dry. We camped by a little spring that we found by the way. The rain continued all night. I could only accommodate two persons in my tent - the three others made themselves some kind of shelter out of bark. They replenished the fire from time to time, and rested wondrous well - I took their word for this.
It continued to rain and snow all day on the IIth. We set out, however, hoping to be able to reach the mission; but the trail had become so slippery, along the sides of the high hills which we had to cross, that we barely made twenty miles. A large part of this desert is more prairie than forest, dotted with red pines, loo to 200 yards apart, and here and there with fine little bunches of spruce. We camped by a pond, and as our provisions were nearly gone, the Indians roasted a goose that they had picked up on the road, half eaten by crows. We struck camp early on the I2th, in a blizzard or pouderie of snow. We reached the summit of a rather high mountain through a thick forest, where the snow that fell off the branches inconvenienced us greatly, and our horses slid and stumbled at almost every step on the narrow winding path. About two in the