The Dynamiter | Page 9

fault or misfortune, he was
driven to flee from the land of his birth and to lay aside the name of his
ancestors. He sought the States; and instead of lingering in effeminate
cities, pushed at once into the far West with an exploring party of
frontiersmen. He was no ordinary traveller; for he was not only brave
and impetuous by character, but learned in many sciences, and above
all in botany, which he particularly loved. Thus it fell that, before many
months, Fremont himself, the nominal leader of the troop, courted and
bowed to his opinion.
They had pushed, as I have said, into the still unknown regions of the
West. For some time they followed the track of Mormon caravans,
guiding themselves in that vast and melancholy desert by the skeletons
of men and animals. Then they inclined their route a little to the north,
and, losing even these dire memorials, came into a country of
forbidding stillness.
I have often heard my father dwell upon the features of that ride: rock,
cliff, and barren moor alternated; the streams were very far between;
and neither beast nor bird disturbed the solitude. On the fortieth day
they had already run so short of food that it was judged advisable to
call a halt and scatter upon all sides to hunt. A great fire was built, that
its smoke might serve to rally them; and each man of the party mounted
and struck off at a venture into the surrounding desert.
My father rode for many hours with a steep range of cliffs upon the one
hand, very black and horrible; and upon the other an unwatered vale
dotted with boulders like the site of some subverted city. At length he
found the slot of a great animal, and from the claw-marks and the hair
among the brush, judged that he was on the track of a cinnamon bear of
most unusual size. He quickened the pace of his steed, and still
following the quarry, came at last to the division of two watersheds. On
the far side the country was exceeding intricate and difficult, heaped

with boulders, and dotted here and there with a few pines, which
seemed to indicate the neighbourhood of water. Here, then, he picketed
his horse, and relying on his trusty rifle, advanced alone into that
wilderness.
Presently, in the great silence that reigned, he was aware of the sound
of running water to his right; and leaning in that direction, was
rewarded by a scene of natural wonder and human pathos strangely
intermixed. The stream ran at the bottom of a narrow and winding
passage, whose wall-like sides of rock were sometimes for miles
together unscalable by man. The water, when the stream was swelled
with rains, must have filled it from side to side; the sun's rays only
plumbed it in the hour of noon; the wind, in that narrow and damp
funnel, blew tempestuously. And yet, in the bottom of this den,
immediately below my father's eyes as he leaned over the margin of the
cliff, a party of some half a hundred men, women, and children lay
scattered uneasily among the rocks. They lay some upon their backs,
some prone, and not one stirring; their upturned faces seemed all of an
extraordinary paleness and emaciation; and from time to time, above
the washing of the stream, a faint sound of moaning mounted to my
father's ears.
While he thus looked, an old man got staggering to his feet, unwound
his blanket, and laid it, with great gentleness, on a young girl who sat
hard by propped against a rock. The girl did not seem to be conscious
of the act; and the old man, after having looked upon her with the most
engaging pity, returned to his former bed and lay down again
uncovered on the turf. But the scene had not passed without
observation even in that starving camp. From the very outskirts of the
party, a man with a white beard and seemingly of venerable years, rose
upon his knees, and came crawling stealthily among the sleepers
towards the girl; and judge of my father's indignation, when he beheld
this cowardly miscreant strip from her both the coverings and return
with them to his original position. Here he lay down for a while below
his spoils, and, as my father imagined, feigned to be asleep; but
presently he had raised himself again upon one elbow, looked with
sharp scrutiny at his companions, and then swiftly carried his hand into
his bosom and thence to his mouth. By the movement of his jaws he
must be eating; in that camp of famine he had reserved a store of

nourishment; and while his companions lay in the stupor of
approaching death, secretly restored