After travelling about sixty miles, they came to where the country became very hilly and the river made its way between rocky banks and down numerous rapids.
The Indians in this vicinity were better clad and altogether in more prosperous condition than those above, and, as Mr.Hunt thought, showed their consciousness of ease by something like sauciness of manner.

Thus prosperity is apt to produce arrogance in savage as well as in civilized life.

In both conditions, man is an animal that will not bear pampering.
From these people Mr.Hunt for the first time received vague but deeply interesting intelligence of that part of the enterprise which had proceeded by sea to the mouth of the Columbia.

The Indians spoke of a number of white men who had built a large house at the mouth of the great river, and surrounded it with palisades.

None of them had been down to Astoria themselves; but rumors spread widely and rapidly from mouth to mouth among the Indian tribes, and are carried to the heart of the interior by hunting parties and migratory hordes.
The establishment of a trading emporium at such a point, also, was calculated to cause a sensation to the most remote parts of the vast wilderness beyond the mountains.