4th. Not having overtaken Reed's train, to celebrate with them, we
concluded to travel to-day. The Fort Hall road here bears to the right,
which is also the Oregon route; the Soda Springs cut-off route keeps
directly across the old crater. We concluded to go the latter route.
About 10 miles travel took us over the crater, and six miles more over
the hills to a branch of the Lewis or Snake River, a branch of the
Columbia River, where we found another Indian village, with some
Mexicans, and about three hundred of the most beautiful Rocky Mountain
horses. We passed the village and stopped to bait on the side of the
hill, where we found good spring of water. We here had a pail full of
punch made, cooled with a lump of snow from a deep snow bank a few rods
from our camp, to celebrate our National Anniversary. Having drank our
punch, and given three cheers for our glorious Union, we resumed our
march. Soon after starting we came to where we had to descend a very
bad hill, where we found one company with their wagon broken down, who
were about to take to packing. Soon afterwards we came to another
considerable stream which we traveled down a few miles and camped. We
found plenty of grass on the stream and caught some fine trout.