balls and arrows in different skirmishes, presented themselves to accompany me on my journey. With pleasure I bear testimony to their devotedness, their childlike simplicity and docility, politeness, complaisance and rare hilarity; but, above all, to their exemplary piety. These good Flatheads endeavored in every manner to divine and anticipate all my wants.
On the afternoon of the 28th of October, as I have already said, we commenced our march, and made about forty miles down the valley of the Bitter Root. That day we met no one but a solitary hunter, who was carrying a buck, the half of which he offered to us with great eagerness. This furnished us with an excellent supper, and a good breakfast for the next morning. The 29th, snow fell in large flakes, notwithstanding which we continued our march. We crossed, in the course of the clay, a fine stream, without a name [Lolo Fork] - the same one which the famous travelers, Lewis and Clark, ascended in 1805, on their way to the section of country occupied by the tribe of the Nez Perccs. I will call it the river of St. Francis Borgia. Six miles further south we crossed the beautiful river of St. Ignatius
[Hell Gate]. It enters the plain of the Bitter Root - which we shall henceforward call St. Mary's -by a beautiful defile, commonly called, by the mountaineers or Canadian hunters, the Hell Gate; for what reason, however, I know not. These gentlemen have frequently on their lips the words devil and hell; and it is perhaps on this account that we heard so often these appellations. Be not then alarmed when I tell you that I examined the Devil's pass, went through the Devil's gate, rowed on Satan's stream, and jumped from the Devil's horns. The " rake," 2 one of the passes, the horns, and the stream, really cleserve names that express something horrible - all three are exceedingly dangerous. The first and second, on the Missouri, on account of the innumerable snags which fill their beds, as there are entire forests swallowed up by the river. The third pass of
2 See mite, p. 153.