I looked off a half mile to the modern town of Mondak, and wondered how many in that town cared about this spot where so much had happened, and where the grass grew so very tall now.
I gathered blue flowers and quoted, with a slight change, the lines of Stevenson:
But ah, how deep the grass
Along the battlefield!
CHAPTER VIII
DOWN FROM THE YELLOWSTONE
THE geographer tells us that the mouth of the Missouri is about seventeen miles above St. Louis, and that the mouth of the Yellowstone is near Buford, North Dakota. It appeared to me that the fact is inverted. The Missouri's mouth is near Buford, and the Yellowstone empties directly into the Mississippi!
I find that I am not alone in this opinion. Father de Smet and other early travelers felt the truth of it; and Captain Marsh, who has piloted river craft through every navigable foot of the entire system of rivers, having sailed the Missouri within sound of the Falls and the Yellowstone above Pompey's Pillar, feels that the Yellowstone is the main stem and the Missouri a tributary.