220. Travels in North America. 
horse for every two men. Steering about W.S.W. they 
passed the smal] branches of Big River, the Little Missourt 
above its forks, and several of the tributary streams of 
Powder River, one of which followed up they found a band 
of the Absaroka or Crow nation encamped on its banks, 
at the foot of the Big Horn mountain. 
For ammunition and some small articles they exchanged 
all their lame for sound horses with these savages ; but 
although this band has been allowed, by every one who 
knows them, to be by far the best behaved of their tribe, 
it was only by that unalterable determination of the gentle- 
men to avoid jeopardizing the safety of the party without 
at the same moment submitting to intentional insults, that 
they left this camp (not possessing a greater force than the 
whites) without coming to blows. 
The distance from the Aricoras to this mountain is 
about 450 miles over an extremely rugged tract, by no 
means furnishing a sufficient supply of water; but daring 
the twenty-eight days they were getting to the base of the 
mountain, they were only in a very few instances without 
abundance of buffalo meat. 
Three days took them over to the plains of Mad River 
(the name given to the BigHorn above this mountain), which 
following for a number of days, they left it where it was 
reduced to thirty yards in vid thi, and the same evening 
reached the banks of the Colorado or Spanish River. Find- 
ing flocks of buffaloes at the end of the third day’s travel on 
this stream, the party passed a week in drying buffalo meat 
for the residue of the voyage, as in all probability those 
were the last animals of the kind they would meet with. 
From this camp, in one day, they crossed the dividing 
mountain and pitched their tents on Hoback’s Fork of Mad 
River, where it was near 150 feet broad ; and in eight days 
more, having passed several stupendous ridges, they en- 
camped in the vicinity of the establishment made by Mr. 
Henry in the fa'l of 1810, on a fork about 70 yards wide 
bearing the name of that gentleman ; having travelled from 
the mam Missouri about 900 miles in 54 days. 
Here abandoning their borses, the party constructed 
canoes and descended the Snake or Ky-eye-nem River (made 
by the junction of Mad River, south of Henry’s Fork) 400 
miles, in the course of which they were obliged by the in- 
tervention of impassable rapids to make a number of port- 
ages, till at length they found the river confined between 
gloomy precipices at least 200 feet perpendicular, whose 
banks for the most part were washed by this turbulent 
stream, 
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