Sometimes
the river was of a glassy smoothness and placidity; at other times it
roared along in impetuous rapids and foaming cascades. Here, the rocks
were piled in the most fantastic crags and precipices; and in another
place, they were succeeded by delightful valleys carpeted with
green-award. The whole of this wild and varied scenery was dominated
by immense mountains rearing their distant peaks into the clouds. "The
grandeur and originality of the views, presented on every side," says
Captain Bonneville, "beggar both the pencil and the pen. Nothing we had
ever gazed upon in any other region could for a moment compare in wild
majesty and impressive sternness, with the series of scenes which
here at every turn astonished our senses, and filled us with awe and
delight."
Indeed, from all that we can gather from the journal before us, and the
accounts of other travellers, who passed through these regions in the
memorable enterprise of Astoria, we are inclined to think that Snake
River must be one of the most remarkable for varied and striking scenery
of all the rivers of this continent. From its head waters in the Rocky
Mountains, to its junction with the Columbia, its windings are upward
of six hundred miles through every variety of landscape. Rising in a
volcanic region, amid extinguished craters, and mountains awful with the
traces of ancient fires, it makes its way through great plains of lava
and sandy deserts, penetrates vast sierras or mountainous chains, broken
into romantic and often frightful precipices, and crowned with eternal
snows; and at other times, careers through green and smiling meadows,
and wide landscapes of Italian grace and beauty.
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