With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 1

by Unknown

In this direction Captain Lewis had gone about two miles, when his ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water; and, as he advanced, a spray, which seemed driven by the southwest wind, arose above the plain like a column of smoke, and vanished in an instant. Towards this point he directed his steps, and the noise, increasing as he approached, soon became too tremendous to be mistaken for anything but the Great Falls of the Missouri.

Having travelled seven miles after first hearing the sound, he reached the Falls about twelve o’clock. The hills, as he approached, were difficult of access, and two hundred feet high; down these he hurried with impatience, and, seating himself on some rocks under the centre of the Falls, enjoyed the sublime spectacle of this stupendous object, which since the creation had been lavishing its magnificence upon the desert, unknown to civilization.

The river, immediately at its cascade, is three hundred yards wide, and is pressed by a perpendicular cliff on the left, which rises to about one hundred feet, and extends up the stream for a mile; on the right the bluff is also perpendicular for three hundred yards above the fall. For ninety or a hundred feet from the left cliff the water falls in one smooth, even sheet over a precipice of at least eighty feet. The remaining part of the river precipitates itself with a more rapid current, and, being received as it falls by the irregular and somewhat projecting rocks below, forms a splendid spectacle of perfectly white foam, two hundred yards in length and eighty in perpendicular elevation. This spray is dissipated into a thousand shapes, sometimes flying up in columns of fifteen or twenty feet, which are then oppressed by larger masses of the white foam, on all which the sun impresses the brightest colors of the rainbow.

Below the fall the water beats with fury against a ledge of rocks, which extends across the river at one hundred and fifty yards from the precipice. From the perpendicular cliff on the north to the distance of one hundred and twenty yards the rocks are only a few feet above the water, and, when the river is high, the stream finds a channel across them forty yards wide, and near the higher parts of the ledge, which rise about twenty feet, and terminate abruptly within eighty or ninety yards of the southern side. Between them and the perpendicular cliff on the south the whole body of water runs with great swiftness.

A few small cedars grow near this ridge of rocks, which serves as a barrier to defend a small plain of about three acres, shaded with cottonwood; at the lower extremity of which is a grove of the same trees, where are several Indian cabins of sticks; below which the river is divided by a large rock, several feet above the surface of the water, and extending down the stream for twenty yards. At the distance of three hundred yards from the same ridge is a second abutment of solid perpendicular rock, about sixty feet high, projecting at right angles from the small plain on the north for one hundred and thirty-four yards into the river. After leaving this the Missouri again spreads itself to its previous breadth of three hundred yards, though with more than its ordinary rapidity....

June 14.—This morning one of the men was sent to Captain Clarke with an account of the discovery of the Falls; and, after employing the rest in preserving the meat which had been killed yesterday, Captain Lewis proceeded to examine the rapids above. From the Falls he directed his course southwest up the river. After passing one continued rapid and three cascades, each three or four feet high, he reached, at a distance of five miles, a second fall. The river is here about four hundred yards wide, and for the distance of three hundred rushes down to the depth of nineteen feet, and so irregularly that he gave it the name of the Crooked Falls. From the southern shore it extends obliquely upward about one hundred and fifty yards, and then forms an acute angle downward nearly to the commencement of four small islands close to the northern side. From the perpendicular pitch to these islands, a distance of more than one hundred yards, the water glides down a sloping rock with a velocity almost equal to that of its fall; above this fall the river bends suddenly to the northward.

While viewing this place, Captain Lewis heard a loud roar above him, and, crossing the point of a hill a few hundred yards, he saw one of the most beautiful objects in nature: the whole Missouri is suddenly stopped by one shelving rock, which, without a single niche, and with an edge as straight and regular as if formed by art, stretches itself from one side of the river to the other for at least a quarter of a mile. Over this it precipitates itself in an even, uninterrupted sheet, to the perpendicular depth of fifty feet, whence, dashing against the rocky bottom, it rushes rapidly down, leaving behind it a sheet of purest foam across the river. The scene which it presented was indeed singularly beautiful; since, without any of the wild, irregular sublimity of the lower falls, it combined all the regular elegancies which the fancy of a painter would select to form a beautiful waterfall.

The eye had scarcely been regaled with this charming prospect, when, at the distance of half a mile, Captain Lewis observed another of a similar kind. To this he immediately hastened, and found a cascade stretching across the whole river for a quarter of a mile, with a descent of fourteen feet, though the perpendicular pitch was only six feet. This, too, in any other neighborhood, would have been an object of great magnificence; but after what he had just seen, it became of secondary interest; his curiosity being, however, awakened, he determined to go on, even should night overtake him, to the head of the falls. He therefore pursued the southwest course of the river, which was one constant succession of rapids and small cascades, at every one of which the bluffs grew lower, or the bed of the river became more on a level with the plains. At the distance of two and a half miles he arrived at another cataract of twenty-six feet. The river is here six hundred yards wide, but the descent is not immediately perpendicular, though the river falls generally in a regular and smooth sheet; for about one-third of the descent a rock protrudes to a small distance, receives the water in its passage, and gives it a curve.

On the south side is a beautiful plain, a few feet above the level of the falls; on the north the country is more broken, and there is a hill not far from the river. Just below the falls is a little island in the middle of the river well covered with timber. Here, on a cottonwood-tree, an eagle had fixed her nest, and seemed the undisputed mistress of a spot to contest whose dominion neither man nor beast would venture across the gulfs that surround it, and which is further secured by the mist rising from the Falls. This solitary bird could not escape the observation of the Indians, who made the eagle’s nest a part of their description of the Falls, and which now proves to be correct in almost every particular, except that they did not do justice to their height. Just above this is a cascade of about five feet, beyond which, as far as could be discerned, the velocity of the water seemed to abate.

Captain Lewis now ascended the hill which was behind him, and saw from its top a delightful plain, extending from the river to the base of the Snowy Mountains to the south and southwest. Along this wide, level country the Missouri pursued its winding course, filled with water to its smooth, grassy banks, while about four miles above it was joined by a large river flowing from the northwest, through a valley three miles in width, and distinguished by the timber which adorned its shores. The Missouri itself stretches to the south in one unruffled stream of water, as if unconscious of the roughness it must soon encounter, and bearing on its bosom vast flocks of geese, while numerous herds of buffaloes are feeding on the plains which surround it.