into the abyss below," he unfurled the Stars and the Stripes, to wave in the breeze where flag never waved before—over the topmost crest of the Rocky Mountains. And every driver upon the road now can tell how, in the profound silence and terrible stillness and solitude that affect the mind as the great features of the scene, while sitting on a rock at the very summit, where the silence was absolute, unbroken by any sound, and the stillness and solitude were completest, a solitary "humble-bee"[1] winging through the black-blue air his flight from the eastern valley, alit upon the knee of one of the men, and, helas! "found a grave in the leaves of the large book, among the flowers collected on the way."
The Wind-River Range has other qualities than mere formal beauty to recommend it. At Horseshoe Creek I was shown a quill full of large gold-grains from a new digging. Probably all the primitive masses of the Rocky Mountains will be found to contain the precious metal. The wooded heights are said to be a very paradise of sport, full of elk and every kind of deer; pumas; bears, brown[2] as well as grizzly; the wolverine;[3] in parts the mountain buffalo—briefly, all the noble game of the Continent. The Indian tribes, Shoshonees and Blackfeet, are not deadly to whites. Washiki, the chief of the former, had, during the time of our visit, retired to hilly ground, about forty miles north of the Foot of Ridge Station. This chief—a fine, manly fellow, equal in point of physical strength to the higher race—had been a firm friend, from the beginning, to emigrant and settler; but he was complaining, according to the road officials, that the small amount of inducement prevented his affording good conduct any longer—that he must rob, like the rest of the tribe. Game, indeed, is not unfrequently found near the Pacific Springs; they are visited, later in the year, by swans, geese, and flights of ducks. At this season they seem principally to attract coyotes—five mules have lately been worried by the little villains—huge cranes, chicken-hawks, a large species of trochilus, and clouds of musquetoes, which neither the altitude, the cold, nor the eternal wind-storm that howls through the Pass can drive from their favorite breeding-bed. Near nightfall a flock of wild geese passed over us, audibly threatening an early winter. We were obliged, before resting, to insist upon a smudge,[4] without which fumigation sleep would have been impossible.
- ↑ A species of bromus or bombus. In the United States, as in England, the word is often pronounced bumble-bee. Johnson says we call a bee an humble bee that wants a sting; so the States call black cattle without horns "humble cows." It is the general belief of the mountaineers that the bee, the partridge, the plantain, and the "Jamestown weed" follow the footsteps of the white pioneers westward.
- ↑ Some authorities doubt that the European brown bear is found in America.
- ↑ The wolverine (Gulo luscus), carcajou, or glutton, extends throughout Utah Territory: its carnivorous propensities render it an object of peculiar hatred to fur-hunters. The first name is loosely used in the States: the people of Michigan are called Wolverines, from the large number of mischievous prairie wolves found there (Bartlett).
- ↑ This old North of England word is used in the West for a heap of green bush
