“‘stroled out to the top of the hights in the fork of these rivers, from whence we had an extensive and most inchanting view. The country in every direction about was one vast plain in which innumerable herds of Buffalow were seen attended by their shepperds the wolves; the solatary antalope which now had there young were distributed over its face, some herds of Elk were also seen; the verdure perfectly cloathed the ground, the wether was plesent and fair; to the South we saw a range of lofty mountains which we supposed to be a continuation of the Snow Mountains stretching themselves from S.E. to N.W. terminating abruptly about S.West from us, these were partially covered with snow; behind these Mountains and at a great distance a second and more lofty range of mountains appeared to strech across the country in the same direction with the others, reaching from West, to the N. of N.W.—where their snowy tops lost themselves beneath the horizon, the last range was perfectly covered with snow.’”
“Does it check up, boys?” Uncle Dick smiled. “I think it does, except that our old ruins are not right where they then stood on the Missouri. The river mouth is below here. There is a high tongue of land between the Teton River, just over there, where it runs close along the Missouri, two or three hundred yards away, but I hardly think that was where they stood.
“But though the works of man have changed many times, and themselves been changed by time, the works of God are here, as they were in June of 1805—except that the wild game is gone forever.
“Lewis or Clark could not dream that in 1812 a steamboat would go down the Ohio and the Mississippi; nor that some day a steamboat would land here, close to the Marias River.
“But after Lewis and Clark the fur traders poured up here. Then came the skin hunters and their Mackinaws, following the bull boats which took some voyageurs downstream. Then the river led the trails west, and the bull outfits followed the pack trains. So when the adventurers found gold at the head of the Missouri they had a lane well blazed, surely.
“Fort Benton was not by any means the first post to be located at or near this great point, the mouth of the Marias. In 1831 James Kipp, the father of my friend, Joe Kipp, put up a post here, but he did not try to hold it. The next year D. D. Mitchell built Fort McKenzie, about six miles above the Marias, on the left bank—quite a stiff fort, one hundred and twenty by one hundred and forty feet, stockaded—and this stuck till 1843. Then their continual troubles with the Blackfeet drove them out. Then there was Fort Lewis, in the neighborhood, somewhere, in 1845.
“Fort Benton was put up in 1850. And as the early stockades of Booneville and Harrodsburg and Nashville in Kentucky were on ‘Dark and bloody ground,’ so ought the place where we now are standing be called the dark and bloody ground of the Missouri River, for this indeed was a focus of trouble and danger, even before the river trade made Benton a tough town.”
“Well, the glory of old Benton is gone!” said Rob, at last. “Just the same, I am glad we came here. So this is all there is left of it!”
“Yes, all there is left of the one remaining bastion, or corner tower. It was not built of timber, but of adobe, which lasted better and was as good a defense and better. Many a time the men of Benton have flocked down to meet the boat, wherever she was able to land; and many a wild time was here—for in steamboat days alcohol was a large part of every cargo. The last of the robes were traded for in alcohol, very largely. And by 1883, after the rails had come below, the last of the hides were stripped from the last of the innumerable herds of buffalo that Lewis and Clark saw here, at the great fork of the road into the Rockies; and soon the last pelt was baled from the beaver. If you go to the Blackfeet now you find them a thinned and broken people, and the highest ambition of their best men is to dress up in modern beef-hide finery and play circus Indian around the park hotels.