trading post, they kept quite an assortment of goods, which were all
brought from St. Louis, their [_sic_] enormous waggons, serving as a
kind of shop, & store house; they said they had brought 60 hundred to
the waggon from St. Louis; they had recruited their teams, some of them
were fat, for the grass here is excellent; they offered them for sale,
one of our company bought 3 yoke, for from 45, to 60 dollars per yoke.
This is a romantic place, & a good place for a post, for there is
abundance of grass, & water; & some considerable pine & cedar timber on
the mountains. We followed up the stream two or 3 ms & encamped, where
the mountains were of naked rocks, without the least vegetation upon
them, I now saw how appropriate the name, stony or rocky was applied to
them. We passed an alkali pond this morning & gathered up a panful of
the salaratus, which looks like frozen snow, forming a crust around the
edge of the water; I tried some of it, in some bread; it made it quite
light, but gave it a bitter taste.

[June 22--70th day] The roads very sandy; while we were nooning, there
was a severe hailstorm, but it had nearly expended itself, before it
reached us, but as we proceeded, we found the hail in places 2 or 3
inches deep, & they were so large, that it had trimed up the sage brush
completely; it lay on the ground in shady places till the next day, we
encamped for the night on the river, very good grass, but there was
alkali all over the ground, we tried to keep our cattle from it as much
as we could, but they got a little, which affected them some, but we
gave them some fat bacon, which is said to be good for them. Great sign
of buffalo here; also saw one today galloping away through a gap[69] in
the mountains. [June 23--71st day] To day we passed through a narrow
defile in the mountains, where we were compeled to ford the river 3
times,[70] in less than 2 miles, we had to block up our waggon bed
several inches; it is a very bad place, there is a way to go around, but
I am told that it is about 10 ms. & very sandy. There were goose berry
bushes here by the road side, this was the first fruit we had seen; we
gathered some of the green berries, stewed them for supper, found them
delicious. We soon emerged into an open plain, where the main chain of
the Rocky mountains appeared in the distance; Crossed Sweet Water again,
went up a few miles & encamped; not very good grass, plenty of alkali, &
some of the largest kind of sage