By the channel it was called eight hundred miles from Fort Union to Fort Benton, where we hoped to arrive in two months. After the first day's experience, I thought that we should be fortunate if we reached the place in two years. From morning until night the cordelliers toiled as I had never seen men toil before. It was a painful sight, those thirty men tugging on the long tow-rope as they floundered through water often waist-deep; through quicksand or mud so tenacious that the more unfortunate were dragged out of it gasping for breath and smeared with the stuff from head to foot. They frequently lost their footing on steep places and rolled down into deep water; banks of earth caved upon them; they were scratched and torn by rose-brush and bull-berry thorns; they were obliged to cut trails along the top of the banks in places, and to clear a way for the boat through dense masses of sawyers and driftwood.
A day or two after leaving Fort Union we narrowly escaped losing the boat, and the lives of all of us who were on it, in the treacherous swirling current. At the time the cordelliers were walking easily along a sandy shore under a high bank. Ahead of them, at the edge of the water, lay a dead buffalo bull, its rump partly eaten by the prowling animals. When the lead-man was within a few feet of it a big grizzly sprang toward him from the other side of the carcass, where it had lain asleep. The men dropped the rope and with loud cries sprang into the water, since they could not climb the bank. The boat at once turned broadside to the swift current, drifted against two sawyers, and began to turn turtle. The lower rail was already under water, and the horse had lost its footing and tumbled overboard, where it hung strangling, when by the greatest good fortune first one and then the other of the sawyers snapped under the strain, and the boat righted and swung in to the bank. We now had time to see what was going on above. The bear was just leaving the opposite shore and making for the timber; the men, dripping from their hasty bath, were gathered in a close group near the carcass, and were talking and gesticulating as only Frenchmen can. We suspected that something was wrong, and while the bowmen made the boat fast, the rest of us hurried up the shore. The group parted at our approach and disclosed one of their number--the lead-man on the rope--lying moaning on the sand. The bear had overtaken and mauled him terribly, and then, frightened probably by the loud cries of so many men, it took to the river and swam away. We got the wounded man aboard at once, and my uncle set his arm and made him as comfortable as possible. The hunter had saved his horse by cutting its rope and swimming with it to a landing far down stream. As soon as the tow-line was recovered we went on, thankful that the accident had been no worse.