ascend to the clouds, and its slope to be within a few degrees of perpendicular. The sides in many places were broken into crags, at other places, smooth. In some places were enormous gorges and canyons, dividing the immense walls and peaks. These may have been the Rocky Mountains, but I do not remember traveling through any canyon here, or over any very steep or rough country. I think we must have reached the divide or backbone of the Rocky Mountains by a very gradual ascent of hundreds of miles, seeming to be generally level, hut gradually rising. The descent though, was probably not so regular, for I remember going down several very steep and long hills.
It must have been in this part of the country that a grizzly bear was killed, and an animal they said was a mountain sheep. I did not see the carcass of the hear but I ate of the meat. I did not like it, for it seemed to be almost all fat and quite strong, of a flavor new and unpleasant to my taste. The carcass of the mountain sheep was brought into camp and I saw the animal myself, but I was disappointed in its appearance, for I could not recognize it as a sheep. The horns were like those of the ibex, and it was not covered with wool, but hair. But the flesh when cooked, I thought about as good as the best of venison.
When we arrived at Boise River we were again with a considerable company. The river we found to be about a hundred yards wide, quite rapid, and too deep to ford, though the banks were low and not precipitous. How the crossing of the river here was effected I do not remember, hut it was difficult and very dangerous, and one man was drowned. When we had crossed the river, we were at Fort Boise, for the fort was near the river. It was also a Hudson Bay post. It was probably while camping in the neighborhood of this fort that we children were much surprised and delighted to find beads, generally small and white in color, in ant hills. We picked up many of them, but while searching for more presently came to a place where the ground was white with them, and looking up discovered that we were under a broad platform raised on posts seven or eight feet high, and that the platform above our heads was thickly strewn with the decayed corpses of dead Indians. We knew then where the beads came from. Many of
