37 2 The Winning of the West 



their eyes death in the form of famine or frost, bat- 

 tle or torture, and schooled to meet it, in whatever 

 shape it came, with fierce and mutterless fortitude. 7 



When the party reached the Arkansas late in Oc- 

 tober Wilkinson and three or four men journeyed 

 down it and returned to the settled country. Wilkin- 

 son left on record his delight when he at last escaped 

 from the bleak windswept plains and again reached 

 the land where deer supplanted the buffalo and ante- 

 lope and where the cottonwood was no longer the 

 only tree. 



The others struck westward into the mountains, 

 and late in November reached the neighborhood of 

 the bold peak which was later named after Pike 

 himself. Winter set in with severity soon after 

 they penetrated the mountains. They were poorly 

 clad to resist the bitter weather, and they endured 

 frightful hardships while endeavoring to thread the 

 tangle of high cliffs and sheer canyons. Moreover, 

 as winter set in, the blacktail deer, upon which the 

 party had begun to rely for meat, migrated to the 

 wintering grounds, and the explorers suffered even 

 more from hunger than from cold. They had noth- 

 ing to eat but the game, not even salt. 



The traveling through the deep snow, whether 

 exploring or hunting, was heart-breaking work. The 

 horses suffered most; the extreme toil, and scant 



1 Fortunately these horse-Indians, and the game they chiefly 

 hunted, have found a fit historian. In his books, especially 

 upon the Pawnees and Blackfeet, Mr. George Bird Grinnell 

 has portrayed them with a master hand ; it is hard to see how 

 his work can be bettered. 



