WASHINGTON IIlVINo's ASTORIA. 553 



various perils and hardships which Mr. Astor's land adventurers en- 

 countered it will not be in'our power to give a connected account. 

 We shall just sketch out the rugged track of the adventurous traders 

 over the mountains and down the western rivers, until their arrival at 

 Astoria with all the brevity that is necessary to an analysis confined 

 within the limits of a few pages. 



We preface this short sketch of the adventurers' track with Mr. 

 Irving's description of the great American desert. 



" While Mr. Hunt was diligently preparing for his arduous journey, some 

 of his men began to lose heart at the perilous prospect before them. But be- 

 fore we accuse them of want of spirit, it is proper to consider the nature of 

 the wilderness into which they were about to adventure. It was a region 

 almost as vast and trackless as the ocean, and, at the time of which we treat, 

 but little known, excepting through the vague accounts of Indian hunters. A 

 part of their route would lie across an immense tract stretching north and 

 south for hundreds of miles along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained 

 by the tributary streams of the Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, 

 which resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been 

 termed ' the great American Desert/ It spreads forth into undulating and 

 treeless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their ex- 

 tent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the 

 ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primaeval waves beat 

 against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains. 



" It is a land where no man permanently abides ; for, in certain seasons of 

 the year, there is no food either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is 

 parched and withered, the brooks and streams are dried up : the buffalo, the 

 elk, and deer, have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of ex- 

 piring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed 

 by ravines the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and 

 increase the thirst of the traveller. 



" Occasionally the monotony of this vast wilderness is interrupted by 

 mountainous belts of sand and limestone, broken into confused masses, with 

 precipitous cliffs and yawning ravines, looking like the ruins of a world ; or is 

 traversed by lofty and barren ridges of rock, almost impassable, like those de- 

 nominated the Black Hills. Beyond these rise the stern barriers of the Rocky 

 Mountains, the limits, as it were, of the Atlantic world. The rugged denies 

 and deep valleys of this vast chain form sheltering-places for restless and fero- 

 cious bands of savages, many of them the remnants of tribes once inhabitants 

 of the prairies, but broken up by war and violence, and who carry into their 

 mountain haunts the fierce passions and reckless habits of desperadoes." 

 Vol. ii. pp. 5557. 



It is not surprising that the jealous insinuations of Mr. Lisa's peo- 

 ple with respect to the dangers to be apprehended from the Indian 

 tribes and privation worked with very unfavourable effect on the Ca- 

 nadian members of Mr. Hunt's party. 



From the Aricara village Mr. Hunt's party thinned by the seces- 

 sion of some of the less resolute members began their expedi- 

 tion by land over the great ridge of America. Their cavalcade 

 consisted at first of eighty-two horses, most of which were employed 

 to carry the necessary baggage of the travellers ; and nearly all of 

 them, alas, fell a prey to their starving appetites during the journey. 

 In the mountains they met with a marauding tribe of Indians the 

 Crows, by whose bullying pertinacity they were much harassed 

 during some days, After enduring many hardships, they arrived on 



