At length the new light gleamed over the hills, and we could soon distinguish objects around. We had a melancholy prospect: here lay a wet buffalo robe, a blanket, or a leathern jacket; there some hats were half buried in the mud; farther on we saw one of our tents hanging on an oak; wherever we looked, storm and rain had left traces of their destruction. A joyous surprise was prepared for us with the return of light: we saw honest Jack grazing higher up the valley, and Königstein's cream-colour following him. Tiger and Owl soon set out to seek the other horses, which would be easily found if no accident had happened to them, and there were no thick woods in this valley to hide them from us. We fetched up Jack and the cream-colour, and while the Indians followed the trail of the horses, we sought under the stones dry grass and roots with which to light a fire, which caused us great difficulty, and only succeeded after several failures. Then we put up sticks round it in order to dry our traps, and finally looked up those which had been blown away. The articles under the tarpaulin had remained quite dry, as the water ran through the brushwood on which we had laid them, while the heavy stones kept the cover down. In time we got everything in order again, and about noon we saw our Indians coming down the valley and driving our animals before them, which they had found a long way in the mountains in two parties. During the whole day we were occupied in repairing damages. The tents had to be mended, the broken lassoes reknotted, the saddles and bridles cleaned from mud and dirt--in short, the whole day was spent in getting ready to start again. The next morning, however, we mounted again, and no one could notice that our equipment had suffered severely. Since our leave-taking from Lord S---- and his friends about ten days had passed, during which we never went far from the Platte River, as the impassable precipices of the mountains on both sides ran down almost close to the river. At last the latter opened, the mountains on our left trended to the west, and before us was spread out an extensive and hilly tract, which, offered rather decent pasturage for these rough regions. I intended to follow the river generally to the large prairies on the east of the Rocky Mountains, in order to visit Fort Lamarie, and then proceed homewards across the open plains to the south.