LINE OF THE MARIAS PASS. 
277 
with a number of picturesque islands rising some three hundred feet above the water; and on its 
west and east sides is shut in by dark wooded hills, or, on the east, more properly mountains. 
The east side has not been explored. Its exploration is desirable to show the entrance and issue 
of Flathead river, its character as a travelling or railroad route, and to ascertain which rivers 
enter it from the mountains from the east, indicating if there exist any chances of passage of the 
mountains from the head of the Teton and southern branches of the Marias to the valley in which 
is Flathead lake. At the foot of the lake is a small green prairie of good soil—a dark soil, with 
mingled fragments of trap-rock and gravel. At the upper end of the lake is a comparatively 
level and considerably extensive district, inviting settlement. In the immediate vicinity of the 
lake it is prairie; further from the lake it is diversified with woodland and prairie. Its limits are 
not known; it is six miles or more in width near the lake, and is apparently as much as twenty 
miles in its greatest width. The limit to its length was not seen. It appeared to extend in a north¬ 
west direction for upwards of twenty miles. A brook, forty feet wide and one foot deep, a tribu¬ 
tary to Flathead river, flows through it. The general valley of Flathead river and lake, in¬ 
cluding the valley where the Hudson’s Bay Company’s small trading post is, I consider as one 
of the most desirable for settlement, having much fertile soil and wooded lands, with all the other 
desirabilities of good wood and timber, pure water and air, and agreeable locations. Residences 
on the lake will be most agreeably situated, for attractive scenery and advantages of water com¬ 
munication are of considerable extent. The river abounds with fish, mostly salmon and trout, 
and the lake is probably also well supplied with them. The hills which border the western 
side of the valley of Flathead river apparently retire at the upper end of the lake, and the only 
place promising an opportunity to pass from the valley directly westward is at the open spot, 
northward of the lake, described above. A few miles north of the lake we again fall into Flat- 
head river. This river is ascended to its forks, about forty-two miles above the lake, and the trail 
then follows up the most eastern fork. At twenty-eight miles from the lake the wooded mountains 
close in upon the river and trail. To this point the valley continues wide and open, with a slight 
fall towards Flathead lake, and the river for this distance is very similar to what it was when 
first seen. Here it was one hundred yards wide, two and a half feet deep, clear, pebbly bottom, 
banks sixty feet high. After first closing upon the river, the mountains again retire, and there is 
a further nearly level, though wooded, basin for some fourteen miles. At the upper end of the 
basin the river forks—one fork coming from the northward through a straight and promising 
valley, and one from the east. On this route is the trail leading to Marias Pass. There is very 
likely a trail up the other. Beyond the fork the stream is walled in by high precipitous mountains, 
whose gray, naked peaks, in bold relief, rise from dark masses of fir and pine below them. The 
valley is narrow and always wooded; the trail is sometimes laborious and difficult, and grass for 
camping is always scarce, and so continues until the summit is passed. The divide of the Rocky 
mountains at Marias Pass is seventy-eight miles from the head of Flathead lake. In the last 
seventeen miles the valley rises rapidly ; several small falls—one of about one hundred and forty 
feet rise—break the flow of the stream, gradually losing its tributaries and its volume; and 
besides the comparatively narrow ridge with which the valley abruptly terminates in the seven¬ 
teen miles, the ascent is 2,170 feet; the divide at its lowest point is still 2,150 feet higher, and is 
7,000 feet above the sea. A bare, rocky, circular ridge closes the valley, over which the trail 
crooks and winds, and is often just wide enough for the feet of the horse. It is wholly impracti¬ 
cable as a wagon pass. The passage of the summit was made on the 20th October; the air 
was chilly and the snow flying. To this time we had enjoyed fine, clear autumnal weather; as 
we rose in the valley, getting frost, and finally ice, in the night. Dropping down some 2,000 feet 
into the valley on the eastern side of the divide, where heads one of the tributaries of Marias 
river, we passed those small lakes or ponds, clear and cold, on whose shaded borders the snow¬ 
banks of the previous winter were still resting. The contrasts in the growth of the trees on the 
west and east sides of the mountains are very noticeable. On the west the trees continue large 
