“‘We Set out early (Wind N.E.) proceeded on passed Several large Islands and three Small ones, the river much more Sholey than below which obliges us to haul the Canoes over those Sholes which Suckceed each other at Short intervales emencely laborious; men muchfatigued and weakened by being continually in the water drawing the Canoes over the Sholes, encamped on the Lard Side men complain verry much of the emence labour they are obliged to undergo & wish much to leave the river. I passify them, the weather Cool, and nothing to eate but venison, the hunters killed three Deer to day.’
“‘We Set out early (Wind N.E.) proceeded on passed Several large Islands and three Small ones, the river much more Sholey than below which obliges us to haul the Canoes over those Sholes which Suckceed each other at Short intervales emencely laborious; men muchfatigued and weakened by being continually in the water drawing the Canoes over the Sholes, encamped on the Lard Side men complain verry much of the emence labour they are obliged to undergo & wish much to leave the river. I passify them, the weather Cool, and nothing to eate but venison, the hunters killed three Deer to day.’
“Anxious times about now, eh? But still, I don’t think the leaders ever once lost their nerve. Here’s what Lewis wrote about it:
“‘We begin to feel considerable anxiety with rispect to the Snake Indians. if we do not find them or some other nation who have horses I fear the successful issue of our voyage will be very doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it’s accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pass them to advantage or intersept a navigable branch of the Columbia, or even were we on such an one the probability is that we should not find any timber within these mountains large enough for canoes if we judge from the portion of them through which we have passed. however I still hope for the best, and intend taking a tramp myself in a few days to find these yellow gentlemen if possible. my two principal consolations are that from our present position it is impossible that the S.W. fork can head with the waters of any other river but the Columbia, and that if any Indians can subsist in the form of a nation in these mountains with the means they have of acquiring food we can also subsist.’”
“‘We begin to feel considerable anxiety with rispect to the Snake Indians. if we do not find them or some other nation who have horses I fear the successful issue of our voyage will be very doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it’s accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pass them to advantage or intersept a navigable branch of the Columbia, or even were we on such an one the probability is that we should not find any timber within these mountains large enough for canoes if we judge from the portion of them through which we have passed. however I still hope for the best, and intend taking a tramp myself in a few days to find these yellow gentlemen if possible. my two principal consolations are that from our present position it is impossible that the S.W. fork can head with the waters of any other river but the Columbia, and that if any Indians can subsist in the form of a nation in these mountains with the means they have of acquiring food we can also subsist.’”
“No wonder the men wanted horses now—they knew the river’s end was near. And yet they were four hundred miles, right here, from the head of the Missouri!” Billy had hisJournalpretty well in mind, so he went on frying bacon.
“Why, what you talking about, Billy? They made the Forks by July 27th, and by the end of August they were over the Divide, headed for the Columbia!”
“Sure. And at the Two Forks, where the Red Rock River turns south, the other creek—Horse Prairie Creek that they took—only ran thirty miles in all. The south branch was the real Missouri, but they kept to the one that went west. That was good exploring, and good luck, both. It took them over, at last.”
“But, Billy, everybody knows that Lewis and Clark went to the head of the Missouri.”
“Then everybody knows wrong! They didn’t. If they had they’d never have got over that year, nor maybe ever in any year. I tell you they had luck—luck and judgment and the Indian girl. Sacágawea kept telling them this was her country; that her people were that way—west; that they’d get horses. For that matter, there were strong Indian trails, regular roads, coming in from the south, north andwest; but it wasn’t quite late enough for the Indians to be that far east on the fall buffalo hunt at the Great Falls. It took them more than a month to figure out the trail from here to the top. But if they had started south, down the Red Rock——”
“Tell me about that, Billy.”
“We’re working too hard before breakfast, son! Go get the others up while I fry these eggs. If we don’t get off the Fort Rock and on our way, somebody’ll think we’re crazy, camping up here.”
Soon they were all sitting at breakfast around the remnants of the little fire, and after that Billy went after the horses while the others got the packs ready.
Jesse was excitedly going over with Rob and John some of the things which Billy had been saying to him. Uncle Dick only smiled.
“First class in engineering and geography, stand up!” said he, as he seated himself on his lashed bed roll. The three boys with pretended gravity stood and saluted.
“Now put down a few figures in your heads, or at least your notebooks. How high up are we here?”
“Do you mean altitude, or distance, sir?” asked Rob.
“I mean both. Well, I’ll tell you. Our altitude here is four thousand and forty-five feet. That’s twenty-five hundred and twenty feet higher than the true head of the Mississippi River—and we’re not to the head of the Missouri by a long shot, even now.
“And how far have we come, say to the Three Forks, just above here?”
“That’s easy,” answered John, looking at his book. “It’s twenty-five hundred and forty-seven miles, according to the last river measurements; but Lewis and Clark call it twenty-eight hundred and forty-eight miles.”
“That’s really of no importance,” said Uncle Dick. “The term ‘mile’ means nothing in travel such as theirs. The real unit was the day’s work of ‘hearty, healthy, and robust young men.’ One set of figures is good as the other.
“Still, it may be interesting to see how much swifter the Missouri River is than the Father of Waters. From the Gulf of Mexico to the source of the Mississippi is twenty-five hundred and fifty-three miles. Up our river, to where we stand, is just six miles short of that, yet the drop is more than twenty-five hundred feet more. One drops eight and a quarter inches to the mile, and the other nineteen inches to the mile.
“But understand, we’re talking now of the upper thread of the Mississippi River, and of the Three Forks of our river—which isn’t by any means at its head, even measuring to the head of the shortest of the three big rivers that meet here. Now, add three hundred and ninety-eight miles to twenty-five hundred and forty-seven miles. See what you got?”
“That’s twenty-nine hundred and forty-five miles!” exclaimed John. “Is it that far from the head to St. Louis?”
“Yes, it is. And if you took the Lewis and Clark measurements to the Forks it would be thirty-two hundred and forty-seven miles.
“And if we took their distances to the place where they left their canoes—that’s what they called Shoshoni Cove, where the river petered out for boats—we’d have three thousand and ninety-six miles; two hundred and forty-seven miles above here, as they figured it, and they weren’t at the summit even then. Now if we’d take their probable estimate, if they’d finished the distance to the real head of the Missouri, we’d have to allow them about thirty-two hundred and forty-nine miles plus their overrun, at least fifty miles.
“Yes, if they’d have gone to the real source, they’d have sworn it was over thirty-threehundred miles to St. Louis, and over forty-five hundred miles to the Gulf. The modern measurements make it forty-two hundred and twenty-one miles.
“So, young gentlemen, you can see that you are now coming toward the head of the largest continuous waterway in the world. It is five hundred miles longer than the Amazon in South America, and more than twelve hundred miles longer than the river Nile, in Africa.
“Now, Meriwether Lewis did not know as much about all these things as we do now, yet see how he felt about it, at his camp fire, not so far from here:
“‘The mountains do not appear very high in any direction tho’ the tops of some of them are partially covered with snow, this convinces me that we have ascended to a great hight since we have entered the rocky Mountains, yet the ascent has been so gradual along the vallies that it was scarcely perceptable by land. I do not believe that the world can furnish an example of a river runing to the extent which the Missouri and Jefferson’s rivers do through such a mountainous country and at the same time so navigable as they are. if the Columbia furnishes us such another example, a communication across the continent by water will be practicable and safe.’
“‘The mountains do not appear very high in any direction tho’ the tops of some of them are partially covered with snow, this convinces me that we have ascended to a great hight since we have entered the rocky Mountains, yet the ascent has been so gradual along the vallies that it was scarcely perceptable by land. I do not believe that the world can furnish an example of a river runing to the extent which the Missouri and Jefferson’s rivers do through such a mountainous country and at the same time so navigable as they are. if the Columbia furnishes us such another example, a communication across the continent by water will be practicable and safe.’
“Class dismissed. I see Billy has got the horses.” The boys put away their maps and rolled their beds.
All of the party being good packers, it was not long before they had left their camp ground on the knoll and were off upstream once more, edging the willow flats and swinging to the ford of the Madison, which they made with no great danger at that stage of the water. Thence they headed back for the Jefferson fork, having by now got a good look at the great valleys of the Three Forks.
“Which way, sir?” asked Billy now of their leader. “Shall we stop at the real headquarters camp of the Three Forks, just about a mile up—where the Indian girl told them she had been taken prisoner when she was a child?”
“Too near town!” sung out Jesse, who overheard the question. “Let’s shake the railroad.”
“She’s right hard to shake, up in here,” rejoined Billy. “Off to the right is the N.P., heading for Butte, up the Pipestone. We couldn’t shake the left-hand branch of her this side of Twin Bridges, and that’s above the Beaverhead Rock. From there upstream to Dillon, along the Beaverhead River, there isn’t any railroad. We can swing wide, except where she cañons up on us, and may be get away from the whistles. Only, if we go as far as Dillon, we hit the O.S.L. She runs south, down the Red Rock, which is the real MissouriRiver. And she runs up the Big Hole, which theJournalcalls the Wisdom River. And there’s a railroad up Philosophy Creek, too——”
“And up all the cardinal virtues!” exclaimed Uncle Dick. “I don’t blame the boys for getting peeved. Now, we don’t care for cañon scenery so much, nor for willow flats with no beaver in them. I would like the boys to see the Beaverhead Rock and get a general notion of how many of these confusing little creeks there were that had to be worked out.
“I’d like them, too, to get a general idea of the old gold fields. We’re right in the heart of those tremendous placers that Lewis and Clark never dreamed about. I’d like them to know, on the ground, not on the map, how the old road agents’ trail ran, between Bannack and Virginia City. I’d like them to get a true idea of how Lewis and Clark worked out their way, over the Divide. Lastly, I’d like them to see where the true Missouri heads south and leaves the real Lewis and Clark trail.
“Now, what’s the best point to head for, Billy, for a sort of central camp? I don’t think we can do more than go to the summit, this trip. What do you say?”
“Well, sir, I’d say the Shoshoni Cove, wherethey left their canoes and took horses, would be about the most central point for that. That’ll bring us to the last forks—what they call the Two Forks.”
“But how about the Beaverhead Rock?”
“We ought to see that,” said Rob, at the time. “That’s as famous as a landmark as almost anything on the whole river.”
“We can get in there easy enough and get out,” said Billy. “It’s just a question of time on the trail. Taking it easy, give us a week, ten days, on the way to the Cove, taking in the Rock for one camp. It’s not half as far by land as it is by water.”
“What do you say, boys? Shall we travel by rail or pack train now?”
With one shout they all voted for the pack train. “We couldn’t get along without Billy now, anyhow,” said Jesse, “because he knows theJournalas well as we do, and he knows the country better.”
“Thank you, son. Well, I guess old Sleepy won’t die before we get there, though he pretends he can hardly go. Say we get back into the side creeks a little and pick up a mess of fish now and then, and make the Beaverhead a couple of camps later? How’d that be?”
“That’s all right, I think,” said Rob. “I’dlike to get a look at the main river, to see why the names change on it so. First it’s the main Missouri; then they conclude to call it the Jefferson—only because the other two forks spread so wide there. Then it runs along all right, and all at once they call it the Beaverhead. And before it gets used to that name they change it to Red River for no reason at all, or because it heads south and runs near a painted butte. Yet it is one continuous river all the way.”
“The real way to name a river,” said Billy, sagely, “is after you know all about it. You got to remember that Lewis and Clark saw this for the first time. By the time we make the Beaverhead Rock, we’ll be willing to say they had a hard job. People could get lost in these hills even now, if they stepped off the road.”
“All set for the Beaverhead Rock!” said Uncle Dick, decisively.
Soon they had settled to their steady jog, Nigger sometimes getting lost in the willows, and Sleepy straying off in his hunt for thistles when the country opened out more. They did not hurry, but moved along among the meadows and fields, talking, laughing, studying the wide and varying landscape about them. Thatnight, as Billy had promised them, they had their first trout for supper, which Billy brought in after a short sneak among the willows with a stick for a rod and a grasshopper for bait.
“That’s nothing,” said he. “I’ll take you to where’s some real fishing, if you like.”
“Where’s that?” demanded John, who also was getting very keen set for sport of some sort.
“Oh, off toward the utmost source of the true Missouri!” said he. “You just wait. I’ll show you something.”
“
It’s quite a bit of country, after all, between the Forks and the head, isn’t it?” remarked Rob, on their fourth day out from the junction of the river. “I don’t blame them for taking a month to it.”
“We’re beating them on their schedule, at that,” said the studious John. “At the Forks we were exactly even up, July 27th; we’d beat them just exactly one year at that point, which they called the head of the river. But they went slow in here, in these big beaver meadows; ten miles daily was big travel, wading, and not half of that gained in actual straight distance. It took them ten days to the Beaverhead. How far’s that from here, Billy?”
“Well, what do you think?” said Billy, pulling up and sitting crosswise in his saddle as he turned. “See anything particular from this side the hills?”
“I know!” exclaimed Rob. “That’s the Rock over yonder—across the river.”
“Check it up on theJournal, Rob,” said Uncle Dick.
Rob dismounted and opened his saddle pocket, producing his copy of the cherished work.
“Sure it is!” said he. “Here it says:
“‘The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver’s head from a conceived re(se)mblance of it’s figure to the head of that animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it’s source; which from it’s present size cannot be very distant. as it is now all important with us to meet with those people as soon as possible I determined to proceed tomorrow with a small party to the source of the principal stream of this river and pass the mountains to the Columbia; and down that river untill I found the Indians; in short it is my resolution to find them or some others who have horses if it should cause me a trip of one month.’
“‘The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain to our right which she informed us was not very distant from the summer retreat of her nation on a river beyond the mountains which runs to the west. this hill she says her nation calls the beaver’s head from a conceived re(se)mblance of it’s figure to the head of that animal. she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river or on the river immediately west of it’s source; which from it’s present size cannot be very distant. as it is now all important with us to meet with those people as soon as possible I determined to proceed tomorrow with a small party to the source of the principal stream of this river and pass the mountains to the Columbia; and down that river untill I found the Indians; in short it is my resolution to find them or some others who have horses if it should cause me a trip of one month.’
“So that must be the Rock over yonder. We’re below the cañon, and below the Wisdom, and below the Philanthropy, and below the end of the railroad, and in the third valley. Besides, look at it. Just as sure as Sacágawea was about it!”
“You’re right,” said Billy. “That’s the Point of Rocks, as it’s called now.”
They made down to the edge of the valley and went into camp across from the great promontory which so long had served as landmark in all that country. That night all of them forded the river horseback and rode close to the historic point. Jesse, who was prowling around on foot, as was his habit, closely examining all he saw, suddenly stooped, then rose with an exclamation.
“See what I’ve found!” said he.
“What is it—a gold nugget?” asked his uncle.
“No. An arrowhead. Funny one—looks like it was made of glass, and black glass at that.”
Uncle Dick examined it closely.
“Jesse,” said he, “that’s one of the most interesting things we’ve run across on this whole trip. Did you know that?”
“No. Why?”
“You wouldn’t think that arrowhead was going to take you to the true head of the Missouri, and to good fishing for trout and grayling, would you?”
“Why, no! How’s that?”
JESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN EXCLAMATIONJESSE SUDDENLY STOOPED, THEN ROSE WITH AN EXCLAMATION
“I’ll tell you. That’s an obsidian arrowhead. The Bannacks and Shoshonis got that black, glassy stuff at one place—the Obsidian Cliff,in Yellowstone Park! Those old trails that Lewis saw to the south were trails that crossed the Divide south of here. They put the Indians on Snake River waters. These tribes hunted down there. They knew the head of the Red Rock. They knew the head of the Madison. They knew the Gibbon River, and they knew the Norris Geyser Basin, up in Yellowstone Park. It’s all right to say the Indians were afraid to go into Yellowstone Park among the geysers, but they did. They knew the Obsidian Cliff—close by the road, it is, and one of the features of the Park, as it now is.
“It’s a far shot that arrow will carry you, son. It will show you more of these Indian trails than even Lewis and Clark ever knew. Of course, they didn’t want to go south; they wanted north and west, because they knew the latitude and longitude of the mouth of the Columbia River. They knew that was northwest. They knew any water they got on, once over the Divide, would run into the Columbia, and they could see the Rockies, just on ahead to the west. As Billy has said, the Indian girl always was telling them that her people lived along in here. An obsidian arrow meant nothing to them. But it meant much to later explorers to the south of here.”
“It’s a good specimen he’s got,” said Billy, looking it over. “The Indians liked to work obsidian; it would cleave so sharp and clean. I thought they had them all picked up, long ago. Up in the Shoshoni Cove they found a good many, first and last. All this was their hunting ground. A little over the Divide it gets awfully rough, and not much game.”
They spent some time around the Rock, examining it, finding the cliff to be about one hundred and fifty feet in height and giving a good view out over the valley plains, over which one could see many miles, and from which the great rock itself could be seen for great distances.
“Here was the old ford of the road agents’ trail,” said Billy. “They crossed here and headed out, east and south, for the hills between here and Virginia City. They were hunting for easier money than beaver then, though—gold! This was the murderers’ highway, right by here. Over a hundred men were murdered on this hundred miles.”
They went back to their encampment and, after their simple preparations were over for the evening, spread out their books and maps once more, John endeavoring laboriously to fill in the gaps of his own map; rather hard to do,since they had not followed the actual stream course on their way up with the pack train.
“This Wisdom River, now,” said he, “must have been a puzzler, sure enough. That’s called the Big Hole to-day. I’ll bet she was a beaver water, too, as well as full of trout. Wonder if she had any grayling in her. Here’s a town down below here, near the mouth of the Red Rock, called Grayling.”
“Must have been grayling in all these upper Missouri waters,” nodded Billy. “I don’t think theJournalmentions them, but they saw whitefish, and the two often go together, though by no means always. The Madison is a grayling stream, or was—the South Fork’s good now, and so is Grayling Creek, or was. The headwaters of the Red Rock were full of grayling once. The trouble is, so many motor cars now, that everybody gets in, and they soon fish a stream out.”
“Shall we get to see a grayling?” asked Rob. “You know, we got the Arctic grayling on the Bell River, in the Arctic regions. They call them ‘bluefish’ up there. They’re fine.”
“So are these fine. I’d rather catch one grayling than a dozen trout. But they’re getting mighty scarce, and I think before long there won’t be any left.
“But look what a beaver country this must have been!” he added, waving a hand each way. “Fifty by two hundred miles, and then some. No wonder the trappers came. It wasn’t long before they and the Blackfeet mixed it, all along in here.”
“Listen,” said Uncle Dick, “and I’ll tell you a little beaver story, right out of theJournal.”
“Aw—theJournal!” said Jesse. “I’d rather catch one!”
“Wait for my story, and you’ll see how important a small thing may be that might make all the difference in the world. Now the hero of my story is a beaver. I don’t know his name.
“Look on your map, just above here—that’s the mouth of the Wisdom, or Big Hole, River, that Lewis and Drewyer explored first, while poor Clark, with his sore leg, was toiling up with his boat party, after he was better of his sickness.
“Now the Wisdom was a good-sized river, too, almost as big as the Jefferson, though broken into channels. Lewis worked it out and came back to the Jefferson at its mouth, and started on again, up the Jefferson. As was their custom, he wrote a note and put it in a cleft stick and stuck it up where Clarkcould see it when he got up that far. He put it on a green stick, poplar or willow, and stuck it in the bar. It told Clark to take the left-hand stream, not the one on the right—the Wisdom.
“Well, along comes Mr. Beaver that night, and gnaws off the pole and swims away with it, note and all! I don’t know what his family made out of the note, but if he’d been as wise as some of the magazine-story beavers, he could have read it, all right.
“Now when Clark came along, tired and worn out, all of them, the note was gone. They also, therefore, went up the Wisdom and not the Jefferson. Clark sent Shannon ahead up the Wisdom to hunt. But he turned back when the river got too shallow. Result, Shannon lost for three days, and not his fault. He went away up till he found the boats could not have passed; then he hustled back to the mouth and guessed the party were above him up the other fork—where he guessed right. They then were all on the Jefferson. Lost time, hunting for Shannon, and they couldn’t find him. All due to the beaver eating off the message pole. If Shannon had died, it would have been due to that beaver.
“That’s only part. In the shallow water acanoe swept down out of control. It ran over Whitehouse, another man, on a bar, and nearly broke his leg; it would have killed him sure if the water had been three inches shallower. That would have been another man lost.
“Not all yet. A canoe got upset in the shallow water up there on the Wisdom, and wet everything in it. Result, they lost so much cargo—foodstuffs, etc.—that they just abandoned that canoe right there and lost her cargo, after carrying it three thousand miles, for over a year! All to be charged to the same beaver. Well, you and I have spoken before about the extreme danger of a land party and a boat party trying to travel together.
“The next time Lewis left a note, he used a dry stick, and he felt mortified at not having thought to do that in the first place. Well, that’s my beaver story. It shows how a little thing may have big consequences—just as this arrowhead that Jesse found points out a long trail.”
“And by that time,” said John, bending again over his map, “they were needing every pound of food and every minute of their time and every bit of every man’s strength. The poor fellows were almost worn out. Now they began to complain for the first time. We don’thear any more now about dances at night around the camp fire.”
“Yes,” said Uncle Dick. “Now they all were having their proving. It would have been easy for them to turn back; most men would have done so. But they never thought of that. All the men wanted was to get away from the boats and get on horseback.”
“But they didn’t yet know where to go!”
“No, not yet. And now comes the most agonizing and most dramatic time in the whole trip, when it needed the last ounce and the last inch of nerve. Read us what Lewis said in hisJournal, Rob. He was on ahead, and every man now was hustling, because there were the mountains ‘right at them,’ as they say down South.”
Rob complied, turning the pages of their precious book until he reached the last march of Lewis beyond the last forks of the river:
“‘Near this place we fell in with a large and plain Indian road which came into the cove from the N.E. and led along the foot of the mountains to the S.W. o(b)liquely approaching the main stream which we had left yesterday. this road we now pursued to the S.W. at 5 miles it passed a stout stream which is a principal fork of the ma(i)n stream and falls into it just above the narrow pass between the two clifts before mentioned and which we now saw before us. here we halted and breakfasted on the last of our venison, having yeta small piece of pork in reserve. after eating we continued our rout through the low bottom of the main stream along the foot of the mountains on our right the valley for 5 Mls.further in a S.W. direction was from 2 to 3 miles wide the main stream now after discarding two stream(s) on the left in this valley turns abruptly to the West through a narrow bottom betwe(e)n the mountains. the road was still plain, I therefore did not not dispair of shortly finding a passage over the mountains and of taisting the waters of the great Columbia this evening.’”
“‘Near this place we fell in with a large and plain Indian road which came into the cove from the N.E. and led along the foot of the mountains to the S.W. o(b)liquely approaching the main stream which we had left yesterday. this road we now pursued to the S.W. at 5 miles it passed a stout stream which is a principal fork of the ma(i)n stream and falls into it just above the narrow pass between the two clifts before mentioned and which we now saw before us. here we halted and breakfasted on the last of our venison, having yeta small piece of pork in reserve. after eating we continued our rout through the low bottom of the main stream along the foot of the mountains on our right the valley for 5 Mls.further in a S.W. direction was from 2 to 3 miles wide the main stream now after discarding two stream(s) on the left in this valley turns abruptly to the West through a narrow bottom betwe(e)n the mountains. the road was still plain, I therefore did not not dispair of shortly finding a passage over the mountains and of taisting the waters of the great Columbia this evening.’”
“Well, what do you think? Clean nerve, eh? I think so, and so do you. If he had not had, he never would have gotten across. And Simon Fraser then would have beaten us to the mouth of the Columbia, and altered the whole history of the West and Northwest. Well, at least our beaver, that carried off Lewis’s note, did not work that ruin, but it might have been responsible, even for that; for now a missed meeting with the Shoshonis would have meant the failure of the whole expedition.
“A great deal more Lewis did than he ever was to know he had done. He died too soon even to know much about the swift rush of the fur traders into this bonanza. And few of the fur traders ever lived to guess the rush of the placer miners of 1862 and 1863 into this same bonanza—right where we are camping now, on the old Robbers’ Trail. And not manyof the placer miners and other early adventurers of that day dreamed of anything but gold. The copper mines of this country have built up towns and cities, not merely camps.
“Even had Lewis and his man Fields, whose name he gave to Boulder Creek, and who killed the panther which gave Panther Creek its name—pushed on up Panther Creek, which now is known as Pipestone Creek, and stepped over the crest to where the city of Butte is to-day, they hardly would have suspected copper. Lewis set down the most minute details in botany, even now. He studied and described his last new bird, the sage hen, with much detail. Yet for more than a month and a half he and his men had been wearing out their moccasins on gold pebbles, and they never panned a color or dreamed a dream of it. It was lucky for America they did not.
“They found copper at Butte in 1876, the year of the Custer massacre. I wouldn’t like to say how much Butte, just over yonder hills, has earned to date, but in her first twenty years she turned out over five hundred million dollars. And twenty years ago she paid in one year fourteen million dollars in dividends, and carried a pay roll of two million dollars a month, for over eight thousand miners, andgave the world over fifty million dollars in metals in that one year! In ten years she paid in dividends alone over forty-three million dollars. In one year she sold more copper, gold, and silver from her deep mines than would have paid three times the whole price we paid for all the Louisiana that Lewis and Clark and you and I have been exploring! And that doesn’t touch the fur and the placer gold and the other mines and the cattle and wool and the farm products and the lumber. No man can measure what wealth has gone out from this country right under our noses here. And all because Lewis and his friend and their men wouldn’t quit. And their expense allowance was twenty-five hundred dollars!
“This was on our road to Mandalay, young gentlemen, right here through these gray foothills and green willow flats! Beyond the hills was still all the wealth of the Columbia, of the Pacific Northwest also. This trail brought us to the end of all our roads—face to face with Asia. Was it enough, all this, as the result of one young man’s wish to do something for the world? Did he do it? Did he have his wish?”
His answer was in the silence with which his words were received. Our young adventurers, though they had been used to stirringscenes all their lives, had never yet been in any country which gave them the thrill they got here, under the Beaverhead Rock.
“She’s one wonderful river!” said Billy Williams, after a time. “And those two scouts were two wonderful men!”
Two days later, on August 4th, the travelers had pushed on up the valley of the Missouri, to what was known as the Two Forks, between the towns of Grayling and Red Rock. They pitched their last camp, as nearly as they could determine, precisely where the Lewis and Clark party made their last encampment east of the Rockies, at what they called the Shoshoni Cove. This the boys called the Jump-off Camp, because this was where the expedition left its boats, and, ill fed and worn out, started on across the Divide for the beginning of their great journey into the Pacific Northwest.
Now they were under the very shoulders of the Rockies, and, so closely had they followed the narrative of the first exploration of the great river, and so closely had their own journey been identified with it, that now they were almost as eager and excited over the last stages of the journey to the summit as though it lay before them personally, new, unknown and untried.They hardly could wait to resume their following out of the last entangled skein of the great narrative.
“We’ve caught them at last, Uncle Dick!” exclaimed Jesse, spreading out his map on top of one of the kyacks in which Nigger had carried his load of kitchen stuff. “We’ve got almost a week the start of them here. This is August 4th, and it was August 10th when Lewis got here.”
“And by that time he’d been everywhere else!” said Rob. “Let’s figure him out—tying him up with that note the beaver carried off. That beaver certainly made a lot of trouble.
“Lewis left the note at the mouth of the Wisdom on August 4th. On August 5th Clark got there and went up the Wisdom. On August 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th, Shannon was lost up the Wisdom. On August 6th, Drewyer met Clark coming up the Wisdom River and turned him back; and Clark sent Field up the Wisdom after Shannon. Meantime Lewis had gone down to the junction at the Wisdom, not meeting the boats above the junction. He met Clark, coming back down the Wisdom with the boats. They then all went down to the mouth of the Wisdom and camped—that’s about a day’smarch below where we camped, at the Beaverhead Rock.
“Then Lewis saw something had to be done. He told Clark to bring on the boats as fast as he could. He then made up a fast-marching party—himself, Drewyer, Shields, and McNeal—with packs of food and Indian trading stuff; he didn’t forget that part—and they four hit the trail in the high places only, still hunting for those Indians they’d been trying to find ever since they left the Great Falls. They were walkers, that bunch, for they left the Wisdom early August 9th, and they got here late on August 10th. That was going some!”
“Yes, but poor Clark didn’t get up here to where we are now until August 17th, a whole week later than Lewis. And by that time Lewis had come back down to this place where we are right now, and he was mighty glad to meet Clark. If he hadn’t, he’d have lost his Indians. You tell it now, Billy!” concluded Jesse, breathless.
“You mean, after Captain Lewis started west from here to cross the summit?”
“Yes.”
“All right. You can see why he went up this upper creek—it was the one that led straight to the top. The Red Rock River, as they nowcall the stream below what they call the Beaverhead River—it’s all one stream—bends off sharp south. The Horse Prairie Creek takes you straight up to Lemhi Pass, which ought to be called the Lewis Pass, but isn’t, though he was the first across it. Lewis was glad when he got to what they called the source, the next day after that.
“Now, he didn’t find any Indians right away. I allow he’d followed an Indian road toward that pass, but the tracks faded out. He knew he was due to hit Columbia waters now, beyond yon range, but what he wanted was Indians, so he kept on.
“Now all at once—I think it was August 11th, the same day he left camp here—about five miles up this creek, he saw an Indian, on horseback, two miles off! That was the first Indian they had seen since they left the Mandans the spring before. But Mr. Indian pulled his freight. That was when Lewis was ‘soarly chagrined’ with Shields, who had not stayed back till Lewis got his Indian gentled down some; he had him inside of one hundred yards at one time. He ‘abraided’ Shields for that; he says.
“But now, anyhow, they knew there was such a thing as an Indian, so they trailed thisone, but they couldn’t catch him, and Lewis was scared he’d run all the other Indians back West. But on the next morning he ran into a big Indian road, that ran up toward the pass. There was a lowish mountain, running back about a half mile. The creek came out of the foot of that mountain——”
“I know,” interrupted John, who had hisJournalspread before him. “Here’s what he said:
“‘At the distance of 4 miles further the road took us to the most distant fountain of the waters of the Mighty Missouri in surch of which we have spent so many toilsome days and wristless nights. thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in all(a)ying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold water which issues from the base of a low mountain or hill of a gentle ascent for ½ a mile. the mountains are high on either hand leave this gap at the head of this rivulet through which the road passes.’”
“‘At the distance of 4 miles further the road took us to the most distant fountain of the waters of the Mighty Missouri in surch of which we have spent so many toilsome days and wristless nights. thus far I had accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in all(a)ying my thirst with this pure and ice-cold water which issues from the base of a low mountain or hill of a gentle ascent for ½ a mile. the mountains are high on either hand leave this gap at the head of this rivulet through which the road passes.’”
“Go on, Billy,” said Uncle Dick. “That’s all he says about actually crossing the Divide at Lemhi Pass! Tell us where they found the village.”
“Well, sir, that was beyond the Lemhi Pass, up in there, thirty miles from here, about. They’d been traveling, all right. Now that was August 12th, and on August 13th they wereover, and had their first drink of ‘chaste and icy water out a Columbia river head spring.’ And all the while, back of us, poor old Clark and his men were dragging the boats up the chaste and icy waters of the Jefferson.
“Now that day they got into rough country, other side; but they didn’t care, because that day they saw two women and a man. They run off, too, and Lewis was ‘soar’ again; but all at once they ran plumb into three more—one an old woman, one a young woman, and one a kid. The young woman runs off. Now you ought to seen Cap. Lewis make friends with them people.
“He gives them some beads and awls and some paint. Drewyer don’t know their language, but he talks sign talk. He gets the old girl to call the young woman back. She comes back. Lewis gives her some things, too. He paints up their cheeks with the vermilion paint. From that time he had those womenfolks, young and old, feeding from the hand.
“So now they all start out for the village, which Lewis knew was not far away. Sure enough, they meet about sixty braves riding down the trail; and I reckon if Meriwether Lewis ever felt like stealing horses, it was then.
“Now the women showed their paint and awls and things. Lewis pulls up his shirt sleeve and shows his white skin. The chief gets down and hugs him, though that was the first white man they’d ever met in their lives. Then they had a smoke, like long-lost brothers. Then they went back to the Indian camp, four miles. Then Lewis allows something to eat would go fine, but old Cameahwait, the head man, hands him a few berries and choke cherries, which was all they had to eat. You see, this band was working east now, in the fall, to better hunting range—they had only bows and arrows.
“Lewis sends Drewyer and Shields out to kill some meat. The old chief makes a sand map for Lewis, but says he can’t get through, that way—meaning down the Salmon River, west of the Divide. Anyhow, they’d have no boats, for the timber was no good. So horses begin to look still better to Lewis.
“They had a good party, but nothing to eat, and the Indians were scared when he got them to know there were more white men back of him, on the east side the hill. He couldn’t talk, so he told it in beads, and jockeyed along till he got a half dozen to start back with him. So on August 16th he got back to this place hereagain, east of the summit, right where we’re camped now, and he had plenty Indians now—and nothing to feed them.
“But he waited to find Clark, and he didn’t know how far downstream Clark was, and he was afraid he’d lose his Indians any minute. So he writes a note to Clark, and gives it to his best man, Drewyer, to carry downstream fast as he can go. Lewis had promised to trade goods for horses, but the Shoshonis didn’t see any boats, and so they got suspicious.
“Well, it was night. Lewis had the head man and about a couple of dozen others in camp. He was plumb anxious. But next day, the 17th, he tells Drewyer to hot-foot down the river, with an Indian or two along with him. About two hours, an Indian came back and said that Lewis had told the truth, for he had seen boats on the river.
“Now between seven and eight o’clock that morning, Clark and Chaboneau and the Indian girl, Sacágawea, all were walking on ahead of the boats, the girl a little ahead. All at once she begins to holler. They look up, and here comes several Indians and Drewyer with the note from Lewis. There’s nothing to it, after that.”
“Go on, Uncle Dick; you tell it now!” demanded Jesse, all excited.
“You mean about Sacágawea?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It sounds like a border romance—and it was a border romance, literally.
“Here, on the river where she used to live, a young Indian woman ran out of the crowd and threw her arms around Sacágawea. It was the girl who had been captured with her at the Three Forks, six years or more ago, by the Minnetarees! They had been slaves together. This other girl had escaped and got back home, by what miracle none of us ever will know.
“But now, when Sacágawea had told her people how good the white men were, there was no longer any question of the friendship all around. As Billy expresses it, there was nothing to it, after that.
“You’d think that was asking us to believe enough? But no. The girl rushes up to Cameahwait, the chief, and puts her arms around him, too. He’s her brother, that’s all!
“Well, this seemed to give them the entrée into the best Shoshoni circles. Beyond this it was a question of details. Lewis stayed here till August 24th, trading for horses for all he was worth. He got five, for five or six dollars each in goods. Theycachedwhat goods theycould spare or could not take, hid their canoes, and on August 24th bade the old Missouri good-by—for that year at least.
“They now went over west of the Divide, to the main village, to trade for more horses. They cut up their oars and broke up their remaining boxes and made pack saddles to carry their goods.
“Meantime, Clark and eleven men, all the good carpenters, had started on August 18th to cross the Divide and explore down for a route on the stream which we now know took them to the Salmon River. They traveled two days, to the Indian camp. Now theJournaltakes page after page, describing these Indians.
“Now it was Clark’s turn to go ahead and find a way by horse or boat down to the Columbia. His notes tell of his troubles: