While we were disappointed in our expectation of having James Stuart for our commander and adviser, General Washburn was chosen captain of the party, and Mr. Stickney was appointed commissary and instructed to put up in proper form a supply of provisions sufficient for thirty (30) days, though we had contemplated a limit of twenty-five (25) days for our absence. Each man promptly paid to Mr. Stickney his share of the estimated expense. When all these preparations had been made, Jake Smith requested permission to be enrolled as a member of our company. Jake was constitutionally unfitted to be a member of such a party of exploration, where vigilance and alertness were essential to safety and success. He was too inconsequent and easy going to command our confidence or to be of much assistance. He seemed to think that his good-natured nonsense would always be a passport to favor and be accepted in the stead of real service, and in my association with him I was frequently reminded of the youth who announced in a newspaper advertisement that he was a poor but pious young man, who desired board in a family where there were small children, and where his Christian example would be considered a sufficient compensation. Jake did not share the view of the other members of our company, that in standing guard, the sentry should resist his inclination to slumber. Mr. Hedges, in his diary, published in Volume V. of the Montana Historical Society publications, on September 13th, thus records an instance of insubordination in standing guard:
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Jake made a fuss about his turn, and Washburn stood in his place. |
Now that this and like incidents of our journey are in the dim past, let us inscribe for his epitaph what was his own adopted motto while doing guard duty when menaced by the Indians on the Yellowstone:
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"REQUIESCAT IN PACE." |
Of our number, five—General Washburn, Walter Trumbull, Truman C. Everts, Jacob Smith and Lieutenant Doane—have died. The five members now surviving are Cornelius Hedges, Samuel T. Hauser, Warren C. Gillette, Benjamin Stickney and myself.
I have not been able to ascertain the date of death of either Walter Trumbull or Jacob Smith. Lieutenant Doane died at Bozeman, Montana, May 5, 1892. His report to the War Department of our exploration is a classic. Major Chittenden says:
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His fine descriptions have never been surpassed by any subsequent writer. Although suffering intense physical torture during the greater portion of the trip, it did not extinguish in him the truly poetic ardor with which those strange phenomena seem to have inspired him. |
Dr. Hayden, who first visited this region the year following that of our exploration, says of Lieutenant Doane's report:
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I venture to state as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest, it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark. |
Mr. Everts died at Hyattsville, Md., on the 16th day of February, 1901, at the age of eighty-five, survived by his daughter, Elizabeth Everts Verrill, and a young widow, and also a son nine years old, born when Everts was seventy-six years of age,—a living monument to bear testimony to that physical vigor and vitality which carried him through the "Thirty-seven days of peril," when he was lost from our party in the dense forest on the southwest shore of Yellowstone lake.