The Jocko Valley is one of the prettiest of the minor valleys of the
Rocky Mountain system. It was all a green, flowery meadow when I
traversed it in the month of June. Its width is about ten miles and its
length perhaps thirty. Low, wooded mountain ranges surround it. That
on the east is broken by the main branch of the stream, and through
the rift can be seen the main chain of the Rockies--a mighty mass of
crags and cliffs and snow-fields thrust up among the clouds. For thirty
miles after the Jocko joins the Clark's Fork of the Columbia, called
by most people in this region the Pend d'Oreille River, the main river
is bordered by narrow green bottoms and broad stretches of grassy
uplands rising to the steeper inclines of fir-clad mountains. Herds
of horses are occasionally seen, and now and then the log hut of some
thrifty Indian or half-breed, or the canvas lodge of a family that
prefers the discomforts and freedom of savage life to the comforts and
restraints of a local habitation. The first night out from the agency
was spent at the hut of one of the queer characters that hang about
Indian reservations,--a shiftless white man, who pays for the privilege
of ferrying travelers across the river by taking the Indians over
free. He lives in a dirty one-room hut. In response to a suggestion
about supper, he declared that he would not cook for the Apostle Paul
himself, but added that we were welcome to use his stove, and could
take anything eatable to be found on the premises. His bill next
morning was seven dollars--one dollar, he explained, for victuals for
the party, and six for ferriage. A wagon-box offered a more inviting
place for a bed that night than the floor of the ferryman's cabin.
A day's travel brought us out of the Flathead Reservation, and at
the same time to the end of the wagon road and of the open country.
The road did not, like one of those western highways described by
Longfellow, end in a squirrel track and run up a tree, but it stopped
short at a saw-mill on the river's edge, where a hundred men were at
work cutting logs and sawing bridge timber for the railroad advancing
up the gorge eighty miles below.
There are many camas prairies, big and little, in Montana and Idaho,
and they all resemble each other in being fertile green basins among
the mountains, in whose moist soil the camas plant flourishes. This
was, perhaps, fifteen miles broad by twenty-five long--all magnificent
grazing land. We passed an Indian village of a dozen lodges, the doors
of the tents shaded by arbors of green boughs, under which sat the
squaws in their red, green and white blankets. On the plain fed herds
of horses, and among them Indian riders galloped about seeking the
animals they wanted to lariat for the next day's hunting expedition.