On beholding the dismal scene, the triumphant warriors cast away their spoils, arms, and clothing, and then putting on robes of leather, and smearing their heads with mud, they betook themselves to the hills for three days and nights, to howl and moan, and cut their flesh. It is observed, that this mode of expressing public grief, bears a striking resemblance to the customs of the Jews. The track towards Fort Vancouver exhibited a country, which may yet make a great figure in the American world,--immense valleys sheltered by mountain ridges, and containing beautiful lakes. In one instance, their tents were pitched in a valley of about five hundred acres enclosed by mountains on three sides, and a lake on the fourth. From the edge of the waters there arose a gentle descent of six or eight hundred feet covered with vines, and composed of the accumulated fragments of the heights above; and on the upper border of this slope there stood perpendicular walls of granite of three or four thousand feet high, while among those dizzy altitudes, the goats and sheep bounded in playful security. This defile had been the scene of an exploit. One of the Crees, whom they had met a few days before, had been tracked into the valley along with his wife and family by five warriors of a hostile tribe. On perceiving the odds against him, the man gave himself up for lost, observing to the woman, that as they could die but once, they had better die without resistance. The wife, however, said, that "as they had but one life to lose, they had the more reason to defend it," and, suiting the action to the word, the heroic wife brought the foremost of the enemy down to the ground by a bullet, while the husband disposed of two others by two arrows. The fourth warrior was rushing on the woman with uplifted tomahawk, when he stumbled and fell. She darted forward, and buried her knife in his heart. The sole surviving assailant now turned and fled, discharging, however, a bullet which wounded the man in the arm. They had now reached that rocky range from which the eastern and western rivers of those mighty provinces take their common departure. Here they estimated the height of the pass to be seven or eight thousand feet above sea-level, while the peaks seemed to be nearly half that height above their heads. Of course, the party often felt the torture of mosquitoes, but one valley was so pre-eminently infested with those tormentors, that man and beast alike preferred being nearly choked with smoke, in which they plunged, for the sake of escaping their stings. But we advert to this common plague of all forest travel, only for its legendary honours.