180 NARRATIVE OF 1853. 
Near the summit of the mountain he found a hot spring, with a temperature of 132°, around 
which was a fine prairie camping ground.—(See sketch.) Many of the camps were made in the 
mountain tops, because the river bottoms, being densely wooded, did not furnish grass for the 
animals of the Indians who had made the route. The valleys, wherever crossed, were rich, 
and near the western base became interspersed with more prairies. 
This route is nearly one and the same as that followed by Lewis and Clark in 1805; the 
Lou-Lou Fork being their Travellers’ Rest creek, and the hot springs referred to are those 
spoken of by these indefatigable explorers. 
Leaving the Bitter Root valley again on the 19th of September, Lieutenant Mullan went 
down the river to the Lou-Lou Fork, which is fifteen yards wide and two feet deep at its 
mouth. Its valley is five hundred yards wide, and the mountains on each side are quite high 
and well timbered with pine and cedar, (Arbor vite. )—(See sketch.) A good road is found for 
twenty miles up the stream, partly through prairie and open forest. 
Above this the route is over rugged hills to the dividing ridge, which was low and obstructed 
with fallen timber. On the west side of this he encamped in a prairie two miles in length, 
through which flows a branch of the Clearwater or Koos-koos-kia. From this point to the 
main stream of the Koos-koos-kia, a distance in a straight line of sixty-five miles, he was eleven 
days in travelling, the whole country being one immense bed of rugged, difficult, pine-clad 
mountains, with many small prairies among them having a rich soil. The route is thoroughly 
and utterly impracticable for a railroad route. 
Among the trees, the white maple, balsam, spruce, mountain ash, alder, and a cherry appear 
for the first time in these mountains. 
On the 2d of October Lieutenant Mullan entered upon the southeastern corner of the great 
plain of the Columbia, at the point where the Koos-koos-kia emerges from the Bitter Root 
mountains. Rich Kamash prairies occurred at intervals along the river and its branches for 
many miles before reaching the open plains, and twenty miles from the edge of the forest a 
branch of the Koos-koos-kia was crossed, flowing through a deep, narrow gorge in the plain, 
with perpendicular walls like the other streams westward. An open pine forest, eight miles 
wide, was crossed further west. In one of the narrow valleys many kinds of vegetables were 
abundantly cultivated by the Indians with great success. "The soil is generally very fertile, 
and in many places a rich loam two feet deep. The Koos-koos-kia is from 150 to 200 yards 
wide and two and a half feet deep, with a valley half a mile in width, and flows with a gentle 
and equal current to its mouth. From the border of the forest to its mouth is about sixty 
miles. On the evening of the 5th he reached the Snake river and encamped on its banks. 
On account of Lieutenant Mullan’s route having kept at a distance from the river, towards 
the north, and along the summits of the dividing spurs, the country in the direction of the 
river appeared, both to him and Mr. Tinkham, to be only a mass of wooded mountains; yet 
there is some probability that a large level valley might exist, and be quite hidden from the 
routes of both, a distance of twenty or thirty miles. The general direction of the branches 
also indicates a great depression near the principal forks and east of the most westerly wooded 
ridge, at which their routes converge and come out upon the rolling prairie or plain of the 
Columbia. | Бар С, 
At Ив mouth the Koos-koos-kia is nearly two hundred yards wide, with high bluffs, and 
destitute of timber; the water of a deep sea-green color and very deep, the banks showing a 
rise of ten or fifteen feet at the high stage of water above that of October. Seven miles 
