106 FALLS OF THE LOWER PELOUSE. 
horses too have nearly all been taken from them, 
and the trails intersecting the hills are about the 
only records remaining of the herds of mustangs 
that once scrambled over their rocky slopes. 
Those of the Pelouse Indians I saw were fine 
athletic men for savages, but dirty, idle, and 
greedy to an unusual degree. Their canoes 
are clumsily dug out, and their lodges are made 
of rush and bark mats. 
July 3.—We make an early start; I leave 
the mule-train to follow the course of the 
Pelouse river. The stream forces its way for 
many miles between vertical walls of basaltic 
rock; when standing on the edge of the caion, 
I look down at the surging water, 200 feet 
below me, and often more; the faces of the rock- 
walls are quite as smooth as if some giant had 
hammer-dressed them. I have never seen a 
more grand or stranger-looking waterfall than 
is this of the Lower Pelouse. The trail I follow 
is about a quarter of a mile from the river, 
winding in tortuous course between immense 
fragments of rock, that completely hide the 
country to my left; ahead, a line of splintered 
peaks denotes the course of the river canon; 
behind, I gaze back upon the Snake river, and 
the stupendous cliffs beetling over its frothy 
