SCENES IN THE PACIFIC. 
319 
kenyons, of basalt and trap rocks, and dashes on terribly over 
fallen precipices for about eighty miles, where it loses itself 
in the sand. This river was explored by an American trap¬ 
per, several years ago, under the following circumstances. 
He had been hunting beaver for some time among the moun¬ 
tains in which the river rises, with considerable success, 
and without seeing any Indians to disturb his lonely tranquil¬ 
lity. One night, however, when the season was far advanc¬ 
ed, a party of the Arapahoes, which had been watching his 
movements unseen by him, stole all his traps. Thus situated, 
without the means of continuing his hunt, and being two hun¬ 
dred miles from any trading post where he could obtain a 
supply, he determined to build a canoe and descend the Rio 
Severe, in the hope that it might bear him down to the habi¬ 
table parts of California. He, therefore, addressed himself to 
this task with great perseverance, completed his bark, and 
launched himself upon the angry stream, with life pledged to 
his undertaking, and that daring expectation so peculiar to 
the “ mountain men,” to light his way among the dark and 
brawling caverns through which his frail and perilous craft 
was to bear him. Seven days he passed in floating down this 
stream. Most of its course he found walled-in by lofty per¬ 
pendicular cliffs, rising several hundred feet high, dark and 
shining, and making palpable his imprisonment within the 
barriers of endless solitude. At intervals he found cataracts, 
down which he passed his boat by means of lines, and then 
with great labor and hazard, clambered up and down the pre¬ 
cipices till he reached the waters below. On these rapids 
the water was from two to three feet deep, and a hundred 
yards in width. In the placid sections, the stream was often 
thirty and forty feet in depth, and so transparent, that the 
pebbly bottom and the fish swimming near it, were seen, when 
the sun shone, as distinctly as the like appear in the suppos¬ 
ed peerless waters of Lake George. As this man drew near 
the close of his fifth day’s journeying, the chasms began to 
disappear, and the country to open into rolling and drifting 
