By October the company was reduced to a diet of dog; but the last Divide had been crossed. Horses were left with an Indian chief of the Flatheads, and the explorers glided down the Clearwater, leading to the Columbia, in five canoes and one pilot boat. Great was the joy in camp on November 8, 1805; for the boats had passed the last portage of the Columbia. When heavy fog rose, there burst on the eager gaze of the voyageurs the shining expanse of the Pacific. The shouts of the jubilant voyageurs mingled with the roar of ocean breakers. Like Alexander Mackenzie of the far North a decade before, Lewis and Clark had reached the long-sought Western Sea. They had been first up the Missouri, first across the middle Rockies, and first down the Columbia to the Pacific.
Seven huts, known as Fort Clatsop, were knocked up on the south side of the Columbia's harbor for winter quarters; and a wretched winter the little fort spent, beleaguered not by hostiles, but by such inclement damp that all the men were ill before spring and their very leather suits rotted from their backs. Many a time, coasting the sea, were they benighted. Spreading mats on the sand, they slept in the drenching rain. Unused to ocean waters, the inland voyageurs became deadly seasick. Once, when all were encamped on the shore, an enormous tidal wave broke over the camp with a smashing of log-drift that almost crushed the boats. Nez Perces and Flatheads had assisted the white men after the Snake guides had turned back. Clatsops and Chinooks were now their neighbors. Christmas and New Year of 1806 were celebrated by a discharge of firearms. No boats chanced to touch at the Columbia during the winter. The time was passed laying up store of elk meat and leather; for the company was not only starving, but nearly naked. The Pacific had been reached on November 14, 1805. Fort Clatsop was evacuated on the afternoon of March 23, 1806.
The goods left to trade for food and horses when Lewis and Clark departed from the coast inland had dwindled to what could have been tied in two handkerchiefs; but necessity proved the mother of invention, and the men cut the brass buttons from their tattered clothes and vended brass trinkets to the Indians. The medicine-chest was also sacrificed, every Indian tribe besieging the two captains for eye-water, fly-blisters, and other patent wares. The poverty of the white man roused the insolence of the natives on the return over the mountains. Rocks were rolled down on the boatmen at the worst portages by aggressive Indians; and once, when the hungry voyageurs were at a meal of dog meat, an Indian impudently flung a live pup straight at Captain Lewis' plate. In a trice the pup was back in the fellow's face; Lewis had seized a weapon; and the crestfallen aggressor had taken ignominiously to his heels. When they had crossed the mountains, the forces divided into three parties, two to go east by the Yellowstone, one under Lewis by the main Missouri.
Somewhere up the height of land that divides the southern waters of the Saskatchewan from the northern waters of the Missouri, the tracks of Minnetaree warriors were found. These were the most murderous raiders of the plains. Over a swell of the prairie Lewis was startled to see a band of thirty horses, half of them saddled. The Indians were plainly on the war-path, for no women were in camp; so Lewis took out his flag and advanced unfalteringly. An Indian came forward. Lewis and the chief shook hands, but Lewis now had no presents to pacify hostiles. Camping with the Minnetarees for the night, as if he feared nothing, Lewis nevertheless took good care to keep close watch on all movements. He smoked the pipe of peace with them as late as he dared; and when he retired to sleep, he had ordered Fields and the other two white men to be on guard. At sunrise the Indians crowded round the fire, where Fields had for the moment carelessly laid his rifle. Simultaneously, the warriors dashed at the weapons of the sleeping white men, while other Indians made off with the explorers' horses. With a shout, Fields gave the alarm, and pursuing the thieves, grappled with the Indian who had stolen his rifle. In the scuffle the Indian was stabbed to the heart. Drewyer succeeded in wresting back his gun, and Lewis dashed out with his pistol, shouting for the Indians to leave the horses. The raiders were mounting to go off at full speed. The white men pursued on foot. Twelve horses fell behind; but just as the Indians dashed for hiding behind a cliff, Lewis' strength gave out. He warned them if they did not stop he would shoot. An Indian turned to fire with one of the stolen weapons, and instantly Lewis' pistol rang true. The fellow rolled to earth mortally wounded; but Lewis felt the whiz of a bullet past his own head. Having captured more horses than they had lost, the white men at once mounted and rode for their lives through river and slough, sixty miles without halt; for the Minnetarees would assuredly rally a larger band of warriors to their aid. A pause of an hour to refresh the horses and a wilder ride by moonlight put forty more miles between Captain Lewis and danger. At daylight the men were so sore from the mad pace for twenty-four hours that they could scarcely stand; but safety depended on speed and on they went again till they reached the main Missouri, where by singularly good luck some of the other voyageurs had arrived.
[Illustration: On Guard.]
The entire forces were reunited below the Yellowstone on August 12th. Traders on the way up the Missouri from St. Louis brought first news of the outer world, and the discoverers were not a little amused to learn that they had been given up for dead. At the Mandans, Colter, one of the frontiersmen, asked leave to go back to the wilds; and Chaboneau, with his dauntless wife, bade the white men farewell. On September 20th settlers on the river bank above St. Louis were surprised to see thirty ragged men, with faces bronzed like leather, passing down the river. Then some one remembered who these worn voyageurs were, and cheers of welcome made the cliffs of the Missouri ring. On September 23d, at midday, the boats drew quietly up to the river front of St. Louis. Lewis and Clark, the greatest pathfinders of the United States, had returned from the discovery of a new world as large as half Europe, without losing a single man but Sergeant Floyd, who had died from natural causes a few months after leaving St. Louis. What Radisson had begun in 1659-1660, what De la Vérendrye had attempted when he found the way barred by the Rockies—was completed by Lewis and Clark in 1805. It was the last act in that drama of heroes who carved empire out of wilderness; and all alike possessed the same hero-qualities—courage and endurance that were indomitable, the strength that is generated in life-and-death grapple with naked primordial reality, and that reckless daring which defies life and death. Those were hero-days; and they produced hero-types, who flung themselves against the impossible—and conquered it. What they conquered we have inherited. It is the Great Northwest.
