PELAGIE GUERETTE.
The summer of 1842 was mostly spent on the lower river, without any incident of especial note. This year was marked, however, by a very important event in the life of Captain La Barge. On the 17th of August, 1842, he was married to Pelagie Guerette. His wife’s mother’s name was Marie Palmer, one of a noted Illinois family of that name. Her father’s name was Pierre Guerette, one of the Louisiana French, and he was born in Kaskaskia, Ill. He was a millwright and architect. He built for Auguste Chouteau one of the first grist mills run by water in St. Louis. The mill was located at the old dam which extended from Chouteau Avenue to Market Street, in the vicinity of Ninth Street. Pelagie Guerette was born January 10, 1825, and was therefore nearly ten years Captain La Barge’s junior. He had known her from childhood. She was a beautiful woman, and although not robust in health, reared a family of five boys and two girls, to adult years. She was a very sensible, noble woman, and a constant help to her husband during their married life of nearly sixty years.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MISSOURI RIVER.
DEPARTED GLORY.
We have now followed the career of Captain La Barge through the various experiences of youth and early manhood until he is finally settled in the business of his subsequent life—the navigation of the Missouri River. It is therefore a proper time to consider the nature of that business, its features of peculiar interest, and its relation to the growth of the western country. This is the more important because it is a phase in the development of that country which has permanently passed away, and in the general mind is already buried in oblivion. Yet for fully a hundred years the history of the Missouri River was the history of the country through which it flowed. Its importance no one to-day can comprehend. Now the railroad has made accessible almost every section of the country. Then there were no railroads to speak of west of the Mississippi, nor, for that matter, any other roads worthy of mention. The river was the great, and almost the only, highway of travel and commerce. Everything was done with reference to it. Commercial posts and military garrisons were established; expeditions were undertaken, and all business operations were carried on with careful reference to this mighty stream, which descended from the distant mountains to the very heart of the continent and thence to the sea, whence the road was open to every quarter of the globe. But now its influence upon the growth of the western country has ceased to exist. The mighty river, which was once alive with steamboats and other craft, from the Great Falls to its mouth, cannot boast a single regular packet. In the most absolute sense its glory has departed, and not a trace is left to remind the modern observer of its former greatness. In the following descriptions, therefore, we hope to be serving the true purpose of history, in gathering together for preservation some interesting features of a type of our frontier life which has long since run its appointed course.
Of all the rivers on the globe the longest is the Missouri-Mississippi. On the summit of the Rocky Mountains, above the upper Red Rock Lake, some forty miles west of the Yellowstone National Park, and directly on the boundary between the States of Montana and Idaho, Jefferson Fork of the Missouri, finds its source. From this point, by a continuous water course to the Gulf of Mexico, the distance is 4221 miles. The river is formed by the confluence of three fine mountain streams which unite at a point about fifty miles south of Helena, Mont. They were named by their discoverers, Lewis and Clark, the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin rivers, in honor of the national administration which set on foot the expedition of these explorers. Two of these streams rise in the Yellowstone National Park, and the other, as we have seen, a little distance to the westward.
THE YELLOWSTONE.
Of the many tributaries of the Missouri the most important is the Yellowstone, which rivals in size the main stream and joins it nearly eight hundred miles below the Three Forks. Like the Missouri it finds its source in and around that now famous region, where Nature has lavished without stint her most marvelous handiwork, and which the government of the United States has set apart for the common enjoyment of the people. Both the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers, in the upper portions of their course, flow over immense cascades and rapids which have become well known among the cataracts of the globe. The Great Falls of the Missouri are located near the modern city of the same name. They comprise several cataracts and rapids, the highest perpendicular distance being 87 feet, and the total fall over 500 feet. The falls of the Yellowstone are within the National Park, the highest perpendicular distance being 310 feet, and the total descent from Yellowstone Lake to below the first cañon near Livingston, Mont., being about 3200 feet.
ALLUVIAL CHARACTER.