CHAPTER XLV.
The Snake River Deserts .-- Scanty Fare .-- Bewildered Travellers--Prowling Indians--A Giant Crow Chief .-- A Bully Rebuked--Indian Signals .-- Smoke on the Mountains .-- Mad River .-- An Alarm .-- An Indian Foray--A Scamper .-- A Rude Indian joke .-- A Sharp-Shooter Balked of His Shot.
ON the 1st of September, Mr.Stuart and his companions resumed their journey, bending their course eastward, along the course of Snake River.
As they advanced the country opened.

The hills which had hemmed in the river receded on either hand, and great sandy and dusty plains extended before them.

Occasionally there were intervals of pasturage, and the banks of the river were fringed with willows and cottonwood, so that its course might be traced from the hilltops, winding under an umbrageous covert, through a wide sunburnt landscape.

The soil, however, was generally poor; there was in some places a miserable growth of wormwood, and a plant called saltweed, resembling pennyroyal; but the summer had parched the plains, and left but little pasturage.

The game, too, had disappeared.