appeared to be its fulfilment. They called to mind, also, a long catalogue of foregonepresentiments and predictions made at various times by the Delaware, and, in their superstitiouscredulity, began to consider him a veritable seer; without thinking how natural it was to predictdanger, and how likely to have the prediction verified in the present instance, when various signsgave evidence of a lurking foe.
The various bands of Captain Bonneville's company had now been assembled for some timeat
the rendezvous; they had had their fill of feasting, and frolicking, and all the species of wild andoften uncouth merrymaking, which invariably take place on these occasions. Their horses, aswell as themselves, had recovered from past famine and fatigue, and were again fit for activeservice; and an impatience began to manifest itself among the men once more to take the field,and set off on some wandering expedition.
At this juncture M. Cerre arrived at the rendezvous at the head of a supply party, bringinggoods
and equipments from the States. This active leader, it will be recollected, had embarked the yearpreviously in skin-boats on the Bighorn, freighted with the year's collection of peltries. He hadmet with misfortune in the course of his voyage: one of his frail barks being upset, and part of thefurs lost or damaged.
The arrival of the supplies gave the regular finish to the annual revel. A grand outbreak ofwild
debauch ensued among the mountaineers; drinking, dancing, swaggering, gambling, quarrelling,and fighting. Alcohol, which, from its portable qualities, containing the greatest quantity of fieryspirit in the smallest compass, is the only liquor carried across the mountains, is theinflammatory beverage at these carousals, and is dealt out to the trappers at four dollars a pint.
When inflamed by this fiery beverage, they cut all kinds of mad pranks and gambols, andsometimes burn all their clothes in their drunken bravadoes. A camp, recovering from one ofthese
riotous revels, presents a seriocomic spectacle; black eyes, broken heads, lack-lustre visages.
Many of the trappers have squandered in one drunken frolic the hard-earned wages of a year;some have run in debt, and must toil on to pay for past pleasure. All are sated with this deepdraught of pleasure, and eager to commence another trapping campaign; for hardship and hardwork, spiced with the stimulants of wild adventures, and topped off with an annual franticcarousal, is the lot of the restless trapper.
The captain now made his arrangements for the current year. Cerre and Walker, with anumber
of men who had been to California, were to proceed to St. Louis with the packages of furscollected during the past year. Another party, headed by a leader named Montero, was toproceed to the Crow country, trap upon its various streams, and among the Black Hills, andthence to proceed to the Arkansas, where he was to go into winter quarters.
The captain marked out for himself a widely different course. He intended to make anotherexpedition, with twenty-three men to the lower part of the Columbia River, and to proceed to thevalley of the Multnomah; after wintering in those parts, and establishing a trade with those tribes,among whom he had sojourned on his first visit, he would return in the spring, cross the RockyMountains, and join Montero and his party in the month of July, at the rendezvous of theArkansas; where he expected to receive his annual supplies from the States.
If the reader will cast his eye upon a map, he may form an idea of the contempt for distancewhich a man acquires in this vast wilderness, by noticing the extent of country comprised inthese projected wanderings. Just as the different parties were about to set out on the 3d of July,on their opposite routes, Captain Bonneville received intelligence that Wyeth, the indefatigableleader of the salmon-fishing enterprise, who had parted with him about a year previously on thebanks of the Bighorn, to descend that wild river in a bull boat, was near at hand, with a newlevied band of hunters and trappers, and was on his way once more to the banks of the Columbia, As we take much interest in the novel enterprise of this eastern man," and are pleased withhis
pushing and persevering spirit; and as his movements are characteristic of life in the wilderness,we will, with the reader's permission, while Captain Bonneville is breaking up his camp andsaddling his horses, step back a year in time, and a few hundred miles in distance to the bank ofthe Bighorn, and launch ourselves with Wyeth in his bull boat; and though his adventurousvoyage will take us many hundreds of miles further down wild and wandering rivers; yet such isthe magic power of the pen, that we promise to bring the reader safe to Bear River Valley, by thetime the last horse is saddled. [Return to Contents].
