30th. Sunday. We remain in camp to-day, having good grass and water.
Some of the boys are fishing trout and have caught several. This is a
beautiful, romantic spot, surrounded by high steep mountains, forming a
basin three or four miles in extent, well supplied with grass. We have
had some Indian visitors here to-day; one of them swam Bear River and
came up to the camp, as naked as father Adam before he eat the
forbidden fruit. He was an old fellow, and as full of his jokes as if
he could talk English. His nakedness however did not seem to trouble
him, as I suppose that according to his notions of propriety, "That
nature unadorned, the most adorned;" and it is no unusual thing to see
the Indian women in the same state of nature's ornament as father
Adam's helpmeet was at the time before mentioned.
A train passed to-day, who called upon us for assistance in crossing
the Four Forks, for reason that every man in the train was sick but
one. We helped them to cross, when they went their way. Dr. Reed's
Pennsylvania train camped here last night. They moved on this morning
with the intention of getting up a celebration of our National
Anniversary on the Fourth of July. We have traveled occasionally with
them since striking the Little Blue, often camping with them, so much
so that we seem to feel like old friends.
July 1st. Struck our tents this morning and crossed the Four
Forks.--Had bad crossing the second Fork, the water being over the top
of the wagon box. After crossing, we had to go over one of the worst
roads around the mountain I ever saw, sometimes raising our wheels up
perpendicular rocks three feet high, sometimes jumping off similar
ledges.--We broke the bolster to our wagon--others experienced other
injury.--Some in advance of us had been still more unfortunate, as the
wrecks of wagons along the road plainly proved. We drove about 12 miles
and baited by another fine stream, where we found plenty of grass, and
caught a fine mess of trout.
This afternoon we had some tremendous hills to climb and descend, with
a very rough road, over combs of rock, but at night we found ourselves
past them, and on Bear River again, where we camped. We have found an
abundance of grass and water to-day, and have had rather a pleasant
time, although climbing some of the hills was sufficiently tiresome,
though not as tiresome as the descent.