LA BONTE'S ADVENTURES. 133 



of "making medicine," having been persecuted by extraor- 

 dinary ill luck, even at this early period of his hunt the In- 

 dians having stolen two out of his three animals, and three 

 of his half-dozen traps. He had, therefore, sought the springs 

 for the purpose of invoking the fountain spirits, which, a per- 

 fect Indian in his simple heart, he implicitly believed to inhabit 

 their mysterious waters. When the others had, as he thought, 

 fallen asleep, La Bonte observed the ill-starred trapper take 

 from his pouch a curiously carved red stone pipe, which he 

 carefully charged with tobacco and kinnik-kinnik. Then ap- 

 proaching the spring, he walked three times round it, and 

 gravely sat himself down. Striking fire with his flint and 

 steel, he lit his pipe, and bending the stem three several times 

 towards the water, he inhaled a vast quantity of smoke, and 

 bending back his head and looking upward, puffed it into the 

 air. He then blew another puff toward the four points of the 

 compass, and emptying the pipe into his hand, cast the con- 

 secrated contents into the spring, saying a few Indian " me- 

 dicine" words of cabalistic import. Having performed the 

 ceremony to his satisfaction, he returned to the fire, smoked 

 a pipe on his own hook, and turned into his buffalo robe, 

 conscious of having done a most important duty. 



In the course of their trapping expedition, and accompa- 

 nied by Rube, who knew the country well, they passed near 

 the Great Salt Lake, a vast inland sea, whose salitrose waters 

 cover an extent of waters upward of one hundred and forty 

 miles in length, by eighty in breadth. Fed by several streams, 

 of which the Big Bear river is the most considerable, this 

 lake presents the curious phenomenon of a vast body of water 

 without any known outlet. 



While following a small creek at the southwest extremity 

 of the lake, they came upon a band of miserable Indians, who, 

 from the fact of their subsisting chiefly on roots, are called 

 " Diggers." At first sight of the whites they fled from their 

 wretched huts, and made toward the mountain ; but one of 



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