Captain Clark set out to reconnoitre the Salmon River route.
"A river of high rocks," said Cameahwait, "all a river of foam. No man or horse can cross. No man can walk along the shore. We never travel that way." Nevertheless Clark went on.
For seventy miles, "through mountains almost inaccessible, and subsisting on berries the greater part of the route," as Clark afterward told his brother, they pushed their way, then—"troubles just begun," remarked old Toby.
Checking their horses on the edge of a precipice, Clark and his companions looked down on the foaming Snake, roaring and fretting and lashing the walls of its inky canyon a hundred feet below, savage, tremendous, frightful.
As Cameahwait had said, the way was utterly impracticable.
"I name this great branch of the Columbia for my comrade, Captain Lewis," said Clark.
Back from the Snake River, Clark found Lewis buying horses. The Shoshone women were mending the men's moccasins. The explorers were making pack-saddles of rawhide. For boards they broke up boxes and used the handles of their oars.
"I have ever held this expedition in equal estimation with my own existence," said Lewis, urging on the preparations. "If Indians can pass these mountains, we can."
Haunched around the fires, the forlorn Indians looked and listened and shook their unkempt heads.
"Me know better route," said the friendly old Shoshone guide. "To the north, another great water to the Columbia."