280 
LINE OF THE MARIAS PASS. 
not over a quarter of a tnile wide; patches of snow discovered themselves, and the air grew 
chilly. A few miles farther the snow was several inches deep, the streams were partially or wholly 
frozen ; and when, on November 23d, about 24 miles up the valley from where we entered it, we left 
the stream near its source, there a brook only twelve feet across, the snow was still deeper; and 
a mile or two farther on, as we ascended the mountain divide, whose western waters are tribu¬ 
tary to the Ivooskooskia, the snow was two feet, and soon after two and a half feet deep. The 
passage of this divide was very laborious ; is by the trail some twenty-five miles long, attaining a 
summit elevation of 7,040 feet, the trail keeping mostly on the open hill-tops, and with its ascent 
and descent, and the snow, gave us three days of hard labor, during most of which time our 
animals had nothing to eat. The snow at times wholly disappeared from the open southern hill- 
slopes, and had a greater depth of three feet. Tributaries of the Kooskooskia are either side 
of this long summit ridge—can be discovered on either side. Their dark wooded valleys, 
making up to the heads of the streams of the St. Mary’s fork, and a constructed road keeping 
the wooded valleys, would avoid the extreme elevation attained by the trail. The country is not 
promising, however, as a railway route; and the Kooskooskia valley, the only outlet through the 
mass of mountains still intervening between this summit and the Great Plain of the Spokanes 
and Nez Perces, is narrow, dark, and shut in by steep wooded hills. There is no good trail 
down its valley. With a precipitous descent of 2,000 feet the trail drops down to the bed of 
the Kooskooskia, which we cross at a level of 3,760 feet above the sea, and immediately turn 
again to the mountain on its opposite side, and wind up their steep projecting spurs and ridges. 
There was no snow in the valley of the Kooskooskia; the stream was thirty to sixty feet wide and 
two feet deep at the crossing. All this country is wooded mainly with pines, firs, spruces, and 
hemlocks. A few miles farther on we again entered the snow, and not over five or six miles 
from the river, on the 27th of November, were brought to a halt in snow about four feet deep; 
crossing the precipitous hill before us, after a week’s delay in fruitless efforts to get our animals 
farther, we commenced on foot the balance of the journey, abandoning everything that could 
not be taken on our backs, and with snow-shoes made during the week’s detention, and heavily 
packed, left the camp in the snow where our progress had been so abruptly arrested. The 
elevation of this camp is 7,250 feet, (as measured on the profile.) During our stay there the 
snow increased in depth to six feet. Hence to the water-base of the mountains is about ninety 
miles; but with our heavy packs, the very steep and laborious ascents, and our inferior snow- 
shoes, we were fourteen days making this distance ; finally, on the 17th of December, emerging 
into the unwooded (save in the bottom) valley of the Clearwater river, a few miles above its junc¬ 
tion with the Kooskooskia. The barometer was left at the snow camp, and the thermometer was 
lost soon after we left there. I estimated at the time that the greatest elevation attained was 
something over 8,000 feet above the sea. All of the route lay over high ground, probably very 
little if any of it so low as 3,000 feet, and then rising as high as 8,000 feet. We had, of course, 
a great deal of thick, misty, and snowy weather; at one time, gaining a high elevation, thrusting 
our heads through a chilly vapor to enjoy the bright sun, while the mountains and valleys below 
us were buried under a sea of cloud. The views which I did gain discovered mountains of 
remarkable sameness, most of them wooded nearly or quite to their summits; no sharply-obtruding 
peaks; few with their gray-brown ridges breaking the monotonous evenness of dark, rounded 
summits, and no open valleys, pleasant lakes, or mountain prairies, such as distinguish the main 
range of the Rocky mountains. In several instances the trail descended to the valleys of the 
small streams, and in all these instances the snow disappeared. 
With a single exception—a sharp, exposed and elevated ridge, where the wind had drifted the 
snow until it was piled to the depth of probably ten feet—I found the snow nowhere deeper than 
at the camps where commenced the snow-shoeing and packing; it rarely exceeded three feet in 
depth, and in places there was more. The average depth for the whole mountain portion of the 
trail, from the head of St. Mary’s fork to the western edge of the mountains, about 120 miles, 
