Travels in North America. 219 
answered the messenger; that they could make more by 
trapping beaver than making war against the Ameficans. 
After crossing the hills (Rocky Mountains) they happily 
fell in with a small party of Snake Indians, from whom 
they purchased a horse, who relieved them from any further 
carriage of food, and this faithful fonr-footed companion 
performed that service to the Otto viliage. They wintered 
on the river Platte about 600 miles from its mouth. 
By information received trom these gentlemen, it appears 
that a journey across the continent of North America 
might be performed with a waggon, there being no obstruc- 
tion in the whole route that any person would dare to call 
a mountain, in addition to its bemg much the most direct 
and short one to gu from this place to the mouth of the 
Columbia river. Any future party who may undertake 
this journey, and are tolerably acquainted with the different 
places where it would be necessary to lay up a small stock 
of provisions, would not be impeded, as in all probability 
they would not meet with an Indian to interrupt their pro- 
gress ; although on the other route more north there are 
almost insurmountable barriers. 
Messrs. Hunt, Crooks, Miller, M‘Clellan, M‘Kenzie, 
and about 60 men, who left St. Louis in the beginning of 
March 1811 for the Pacific Ocean, reached the Aricoras ~ 
village on the 13th day of June ; where meeting with some 
American hunters who had been the preceding year on the 
waters of the Columbia with Mr. Henry, and who gave 
an account of the route by which they passed being far 
preferable (in point of procuring with facility an abun- 
dant supply of food at all times, as well as for avoiding even 
the probability of seeing their enemies the Black Feet), to 
the track of captains Lewis and Clark; the gentlemen 
of the expedition at once abandoned their former ideas of 
passing by the falls of the Missouri, and made the neces- 
sary arrangements for commencing, their journey over land 
from this place. 
Eighty horses were purchased and equipped by the 17th 
of July, and on the day following they departed from the 
Aricoras, sixty persons in number, all on foot except the 
partners of the company. In this situation they proceeded 
for five days, having crossed in that time two considerable 
streams which joined the Missouri below the Aricoras 5 
when finding an inland tribe of Lndians calling themselves 
Shawhays, but known among the whites by the appellation 
of Cheyennes, they procured from these people an accession 
of forty horses, which enabled the gentlemen to furnish a 
a horse 
