The young explorers, used as they were to outdoor life, had no difficulty in getting their outfit up a long coulee to the level of the prairie, where a small car quickly carried them into and beyond the city to a point where another gradual descent led down to the point usually believed to be that where the “White Bear” camp of Lewis and Clark was pitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet, as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from the railway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses had not yet arrived.
“The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!” said Jesse, sarcastically. “All right; but I want something besides fried eggs and marmalade.”
“Easy now, Jess,” rejoined his older friend. “Leave that to Uncle Dick. He told me he was going to get us some sport within ten days from here—fishing, I mean—trout, and even grayling. Of course, at this season there’d be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts of game at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They had thirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty. They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, so somebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs and marmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we’ve got to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don’t kill a buffalo every day.”
“I could eat half of one, any day!” said John. “I get awfully hungry, just from fighting the mosquitoes.”
“I’ll bet they were bad enough. The old Journal says more about mosquitoes than any other hardship. Even Gass in his journal tells how bad they were here at the Great Falls—I think they feared them more than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly, charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!”
“Must have been a busy day!” said John.
“Well, I expect every day was busy for them. For instance, when they got to this camp for the upper headquarters, they had to build two more canoes, ten miles above here. That made eight in all for the thirty-two people, or four to a canoe. I don’t think they ever carried that many with their cargo; and they had quite a lot of cargo, even then. They were eating pork on the Continental Divide—their last pork!”
“No,” said Jesse, “they never did all ride at once. First one captain went ahead on foot, then the other. You see, they got into mountain water pretty soon now. They used the tow line a great deal, or poled the boats rather than paddled. Comes to getting a heavily loaded boat up a heavy river, you’ve got to put on the power, I’m telling you.”
“Yes, sir,” nodded Rob. “They knew they had to travel now. About all they had to go on was the girl Sacágawea’s word that pretty soon they’d come to her people.
“So they set out from here on July 15th, the very day that we will, if we get off to-morrow; only it took them one year more to get here than it did us. And two men were in each canoe—not enough to drive her, they found. And Lewis and the girl walked on this side the river, and after a while Clark walked on the other side—all on foot, of course. He had Fields and Potts and his servant York with him—all alone in the Indian country, of which not one of them knew a foot.