--Mr.
Miller Resolves to Accompany Them.--Their Departure.
ON the banks of Mad River Mr. Hunt held a consultation with the other
partners as to their future movements. The wild and impetuous current
of the river rendered him doubtful whether it might not abound with
impediments lower down, sufficient to render the navigation of it slow
and perilous, if not impracticable. The hunters who had acted as guides
knew nothing of the character of the river below; what rocks, and
shoals, and rapids might obstruct it, or through what mountains and
deserts it might pass. Should they then abandon their horses, cast
themselves loose in fragile barks upon this wild, doubtful, and unknown
river; or should they continue their more toilsome and tedious, but
perhaps more certain wayfaring by land?
The vote, as might have been expected, was almost unanimous for
embarkation; for when men are in difficulties every change seems to be
for the better. The difficulty now was to find timber of sufficient size
for the construction of canoes, the trees in these high mountain regions
being chiefly a scrubbed growth of pines and cedars, aspens, haws, and
service-berries, and a small kind of cotton-tree, with a leaf resembling
that of the willow. There was a species of large fir, but so full of
knots as to endanger the axe in hewing it.
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