ley is seventeen miles long by five or six wide. Thence we passed into a narrow and extremely dangerous defile, which was at the same time picturesque and sublime. 'Mountains of almost perpendicular cliffs rise to the region of perpetual snow, and often overhang a rugged and narrow path, where every step threatens a fall. We followed it for seventeen miles, upon a mountain side inclined at an angle of 45° over a torrent which rushed uproariously in cascades, hundreds of feet below our route. The defile was so narrow, and the mountains on either hand so high, that the sun could scarcely penetrate it for an hour or two of the day. Pine forests like those of Norway, balsam firs, ordinary poplars, cedars, mulberry trees and many other varieties cover the sides of these mountains.
On the loth, after crossing the lofty mountain, we arrived upon the banks of Henry's Fork, [Snake river] one of the principal tributaries of Snake [Columbia] river.' The mass of snow melted during the July heat had swollen this torrent to a prodigious height. Its roaring waters rushed furiously down and whitened with their foam the great blocks of granite which vainly disputed the passage with them. The sight intimidated neither our Indians nor our Canadians; accustomed to perils of this sort, they rushed into the torrent on horseback and swath it. I dared not venture to do likewise. To get me over, they made a kind of sack of my skin tent; then they put all my things in and set
me on top of it. The three Flatheads who had jumped in to guide my frail bark by swimming, told me, laughing, not
to be afraid, that I was on an excellent boat. And in fact this machine floated on the water like a majestic swan; and in less than ten minutes I found myself on the other bank, where we encamped for the night.
The next day we had another high mountain to climb through [Teton Pass] a thick pine forest, and at the top we found snow, which had fallen in the night to the depth
s Father De Smet is in error here and later on, page 228, in applying the name Henry to the main Snake river.