He was the first white man who had ever stood there, and he calls it a sublime sight.
Thirteen miles of cascades and rapids! At headlong speed the Missouri rushes down a rocky gorge, through which it has torn its way, now leaping over a precipice, now lost to sight in the depths of the cañon,[1] a thousand feet below the plain, or again, as with recovered breath, breaking away from these dark gulfs into the light of clay and bounding on again. No wonder the discoverer stood forgetful of all else but this wondrous work of nature!
Much valuable time was lost in getting the boats and baggage round these falls. To pass them was impossible. It was necessary to build carriages on which the boats were dragged by hand a distance of eighteen miles, before they could be launched again.
But after all this had been done the boats were found unsuited to the navigation of the river above them, and so new ones had to be hewed out of the trees growing on the banks, which could better withstand the buffeting of the rocks. In these the party again embarked, and on the 19th of July found themselves just entering a deep gorge of the mountains, five miles long, through which the river wound its way between walls of rock that rose a thousand feet above their heads. They named this awful cañon the Gate of the Rocky Mountains.
Boat navigation was now nearly at an end. Every day the scouts were sent out in search of roving Indians from whom they might get horses and guides to cross the mountains. But no Indians could be found. A well-beaten trail had been followed high up into the hills, but lost again among defiles so narrow and stony, that when the scouts came back they said no horseman could go through them. So these great mountains, which so long had been to them a guide and landmark, now seemed sternly forbidding their farther progress.
Yet at all risks horses and guides must be had. Telling his men he would not come back till he had found them, Captain Lewis set out on his forlorn search, knowing that on him depended the success or failure of the expedition. The men remained encamped where he left them.[2]
While engaged in this search, Captain Lewis, on the 12th of August, reached the highest source of the Missouri. At three thousand miles from its mouth it dwindled to a mountain brook. Passing thence over the dividing ridge, he came upon the waters of what proved to be the Columbia. So within a few hours he drank of the waters of both. Following the stream down the mountain, with fresh hope, it led him to a village of the Shoshones or Snake Indians.[3]
GATE OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.