CHAPTER I.
ST. LOUIS TO GREEN RIVER RENDEZVOUS. (1)
Steamboat journey to Westport - Passengers and scenery - Start overland with Fur Company caravan - Kansas Indians - Chills and ever - The picturesque Platte-Antelope, prairie-dogs, buffalo and wolves -Chimney Rock-Camp of the Cheyennes on Laramie Fork - Boiled dog - First view of the Rocky Mountains-Red Butte - Sweetwater river - Independence Rock - South Pass.
No doubt you are looking for some interesting details of my long, very long, journey from St. Louis to the other side of the Rocky Mountains. It took me sixty days to cross the famous American desert, and nearly four months to effect my return by a new and very hazardous road.
Sent out by the right reverend bishop and by my provincial, to gain knowledge of the disposition of the savages and of the success that might probably be looked for from funding a mission among them, I left St. Louis (2) on the 27th of March, 1840, in a steamboat, and ascended the Missouri distance of 500 [390] miles to reach the state frontier. The craft on which I had embarked was (like all of them in this land, where emigration and commerce have grown to such an extent) encumbered with freight and passengers from every state of the Union; I may even say from the
(1) The text of the following two chapters is taken from the first 82 pages of the Voyages aux Montanges-Rocheuses where it is addressed to M. le Chanoine Charles de la Croix (a former missionary to the age Indians) at Ghent, under date of February 4, 1841. Letter II of the Letters and Sketches is apparently a translation into English of another copy of the same letter, transmitted to the Father General (Roothaan) three days later; but much matter being omitted, the editors have preferred to follow the French copy.
(2)Accompanied by "Young" Ignace, of the fourth Flathead deputation ; the other member, Peter Left Hand, having gone on ahead to announce their coming.