NARRATIVE OF 1853. 169 
Snake river. Bitter Root or St. Mary’s valley is about eighty miles long from north to south, 
and from four to seven wide; well adapted for agriculture, the soil being a rich, dark loam, 
mingled with sand and gravel, in which wheat, oats, and potatoes have been found to grow 
exceedingly well, and is naturally covered with luxuriant grass, supplying inexhaustible pasture, 
over which already several thousand cattle and horses were roaming and were scarcely noticed 
in the vast area. It has been noted, that when other valleys of the mountains are covered 
with snow, in this valley perpetual spring is found to reign during the whole of nearly every 
year. At that time (November) the mountains on each side were covered with snow from base 
to summit, though no traces of snow were to be met with in the valley. 
The river banks are lined with cottonwood sixty or seventy feet high, and pines much larger 
and superior than elsewhere found, sometimes a hundred and fifty feet high and perfectly 
straight, with a diameter of three feet. At the forks where the prairie ends, he followed the 
southeast branch for twenty miles, and passing over a mountain a thousand feet high, having 
about two inches depth of snow on its summit, reached Ross’s Hole prairie on the 3d of Decem- 
ber. He describes this prairie as being fourteen miles long and four wide, where the grass 
was: six inches long and quite green. A wagon road passes round the mountain leading to 
this prairie, and crosses it, traversing the dividing ridge of the Rocky mountains, about twelve 
miles north of his route. The weather still continued mild and pleasant, with showers of rain. 
Two branches of the Bitter Root river flow through the prairie, having their sources about 
four miles further east in the range of mountains forming the dividing ridge between the 
Missouri and Columbia rivers. This portion of the Rocky mountains is made up of ridges of 
mountains and patches of prairie, varying from 10 to 30 miles in length, and as many in width. 
Ascending the dividing ridge here, called Big Hole mountain, he found its western slope 
perfectly clear of snow, affording a very excellent road, though up a very steep ascent. On 
its summit snow was a foot deep, the thermometer falling from 47° at the base to 36° at the 
summit, which he estimated to be 3,000 feet high. The western slope he considered practi- 
cable for the ascent of empty wagons, and very good for the descent of full ones. 
The descent towards the Missouri side is very gradual, so much so that were it not for the 
direction taken by the water it.might be considered an almost level prairie country. This 
mountain, which is of granite formation, is covered with white pine, growing from fifty to 
Seventy feet high. Неге striking upon a branch of Wisdom river, a tributary of the Jefferson 
Fork of the Missouri, he followed it down through a well-timbered valley about two miles 
` wide, occasionally forming prairies from six to twelve miles long and from three to four wide. 
From his camp on this stream, of December 4, he had a fine view of Big Hole prairie, (see 
sketch,) which is about fifty miles long and fifteen wide. Crossing this on the following day, 
December 5, its western side was found to be covered with snow some six inches deep, though 
none appeared on its eastern. It is hemmed in by high mountains on every side except the 
Southeast, where Wisdom river passes out from it. 
South of this large and beautiful prairie he crossed a ridge separating it from the valley of 
the Jefferson Fork by an excellent wagon road. The country now became more rough and 
barren; no trees except the pines on the summits of the mountains and an occasional cotton- 
Wood. Artemisia, or wild sage, with a trunk a foot in diameter, became the only fuel. The 
weather became much colder, the thermometer, on December 6, being as low as 12°, and the 
streams were frozen so hard as to be crossed without difficulty. Narrow valleys, with fine 
grass, lined the branches of Jefferson Fork; but there was no timber on the river banks at less 
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