They all, however, appeared to gain patience and hardihood as they proceeded, and for fourteen days kept steadily on, making a distance of about three hundred and thirty miles.  For some days, the range of mountains which had been near to their wigwam kept parallel to the river at no great distance, but at length subsided into hills.  Sometimes they found the river bordered with alluvial bottoms, and groves with cotton-wood and willows; sometimes the adjacent country was naked and barren.  In one place it ran for a considerable distance between rocky hills and promontories covered with cedar and pitch pines, and peopled with the bighorn and the mountain deer; at other places it wandered through prairies well stocked with buffaloes and antelopes.  As they descended the course of the river, they began to perceive the ash and white oak here and there among the cotton-wood and willow; and at length caught a sight of some wild horses on the distant prairies.

The weather was various; at one time the snow lay deep; then they had a genial day or two, with the mildness and serenity of autumn; then, again, the frost was so severe that the river was sufficiently frozen to bear them upon the ice.

During the last three days of their fortnight’s travel, however, the face of the country changed.  The timber gradually diminished, until they could scarcely find fuel sufficient for culinary purposes.  The game grew more and more scanty, and, finally, none were to be seen but a few miserable broken-down buffalo bulls, not worth killing.  The snow lay fifteen inches deep, and made the travelling grievously painful and toilsome.  At length they came to an immense plain, where no vestige of timber was to be seen; nor a single quadruped to enliven the desolate landscape.  Here, then, their hearts failed them, and they held another consultation.  The width of the river, which was upwards of a mile, its extreme shallowness, the frequency of quicksands, and various other characteristics, had at length made them sensible of their errors with respect to it, and they now came to the correct conclusion, that they were on the banks of the Platte or Shallow River.  What were they to do?  Pursue its course to the Missouri?  To go on at this season of the year seemed dangerous in the extreme.  There was no prospect of obtaining either food or firing.  The country was destitute of trees, and though there might be drift-wood along the river, it lay too deep beneath the snow for them to find it.

The weather was threatening a change, and a snowstorm on these boundless wastes might prove as fatal as a whirlwind of sand on an Arabian desert.  After much dreary deliberation, it was at length determined to retrace their three last days’ journey of seventy-seven miles, to a place which they had remarked where there was a sheltering growth of forest trees, and a country abundant in game.  Here they would once more set up their winter quarters, and await the opening of the navigation to launch themselves in canoes.