229 Travels in North America. 
Regaining the river bank, they returned up, and on the third 
day met with Mr. Hunt and party with one horse proceed- 
ing downwards. A canoe was soon made of a horse’s hide, 
and in it was transported what meat they could spare to Mr. 
Crooks’s starving followers, who, for the first 18 days after 
leaving the place of deposit, had subsisted on half-a meal in 
twenty-four hours, and in the last nine days had eaten only 
one beaver, a dog, a few wild cherries, and old mockasin 
soles, having travelled during these twenty-seven days at least 
550 miles. For the next four days, both parties continued 
on up the river without any other support than what little 
rose-buds and cherries they could find : but here they luckily 
fell in with some Snake Indians, from whom they got five 
horses, giving them three guns and some other articles for 
the same. Starvation had bereft J. B. Provest of his senses 
entirely; and on seeing the horse-flesh on the opposite 
shore, he was so agitated in crossing in a skin canoe that he 
upset it and was unfortunately drowned. From hence Mr, 
Hunt went on to a camp of Shoshonies about 90 miles 
above, where procuring a few horses and a guide he set out 
for the main Columbia, across the mountains to the south- 
west, leaving the river where it entered the range, and on 
it Mr. Crooks and fire men unable to travel. 
Mr. H. lost a Canadian named Carriere by starvation, 
before he met the Shy-ey-to-ga Indians in the Columbia 
plas; from whom getting a supply of provisions, he soon 
reached the main river, which he descended in canoes, and 
arrived without any further loss at Astoria in the month of 
February. 
Messrs. M‘Kenzie, M‘Clellan and Reed had united their 
parties on the Snake river mountains, through which they 
travelled twenty-one days to the Mulpot River, subsisting 
on an allowance by no means adequate to the toils they 
underwent daily; and to the smailness of their number 
(which was in all eleven) they attribute their success in 
getting with life to where they found some wild horses. 
They soon after reached the fork called by captains Lewis 
and Clarke, Koolkooske; went down Lewis’s partly, and 
the Columbia wholly by water, without any misfortune 
except the upsetting in a rapid of Mr. M‘Clellan’s canoe; 
and although it happened on the first day of the year, yet 
by great exertion they clung to the canoe till the others 
came to their assistance. Making their escape with the 
loss of some rifles, they reached Astoria early in January. 
Three of the five men who remained with Mr. Crooks, 
afraid of perishing by want, left him in February on a small 
river 
