General Gatlin,[51] who was graduated from West Point in the early '30's, and commanded Fort Gibson in the Cherokee Nation over sixty years ago, told me that he remembered Bridger very well; and had once asked the old guide whether he had ever been in the great canyon of the Colorado River. "Yes, sir," replied the mountaineer, "I have, many a time. There's where the oranges and lemons bear all the time, and the only place I was ever at where the moon's always full!" He told me and also many others, at various times, that in the winter of 1830 it began to snow in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and continued for seventy days without cessation. The whole country was covered to a depth of seventy feet, and all the vast herds of buffalo were caught in the storm and died, but their carcasses were perfectly preserved. "When spring came, all I had to do," declared he, "was to tumble 'em into Salt Lake, an' I had pickled buffalo enough for myself and the whole Ute Nation for years!" He said that on account of that terrible storm, which annihilated them, there have been no buffalo in that region since. Bridger had been the guide, interpreter, and companion of that distinguished Irish sportsman, Sir George Gore, whose strange tastes led him in 1855 to abandon life in Europe and bury himself for over two years among the savages in the wildest and most unfrequented glens of the Rocky Mountains. The outfit and adventures of this titled Nimrod, conducted as they were on the largest scale, exceeded anything of the kind ever before seen on this continent, and the results of his wanderings will compare favourably with those of Gordon Cumming in Africa. Some idea may be formed of the magnitude of his outfit when it is stated that his retinue consisted of about fifty individuals, including secretaries, steward, cooks, fly-makers, dog-tenders, servants, etc. He was borne over the country with a train of thirty wagons, besides numerous saddle-horses and dogs. During his lengthened hunt he killed the enormous aggregate of forty grizzly bears and twenty-five hundred buffalo, besides numerous antelope and other small game.