The Mosquitoes And Gnats
Persecute Us As Violently As Below, So That We Can Get No Sleep
Unless Defended By Biers [Nets], With Which We Are All Provided.
We Here Found Several Plants Hitherto Unknown To Us, Of Which
We Preserved Specimens."
On the fourteenth of July, the boats were finally launched,
and next day the journal records this important event:
"We rose early, embarked all our baggage on board the canoes, which,
though eight in number, are heavily loaded, and at ten o'clock
set out on our journey. . . . At the distance of seven and a half
miles we came to the lower point of a woodland, at the entrance
of a beautiful river, which, in honor of the Secretary of the Navy,
we called Smith's River. This stream falls into a bend on
the south side of the Missouri, and is eighty yards wide.
As far as we could discern its course, it wound through a charming
valley towards the southeast, in which many herds of buffalo
were feeding, till, at the distance of twenty-five miles,
it entered the Rocky Mountains and was lost from our view. . . .
"We find the prickly pear, one of the greatest beauties as well
as greatest inconveniences of the plains, now in full bloom.
The sunflower, too, a plant common on every part of the Missouri
from its entrance to this place, is here very abundant, and in bloom.
The lamb's-quarter, wild cucumber, sand-rush, and narrow dock,
are also common."
The journal here records the fact that the great river had now become
so crooked that it was expedient to note only its general course,
leaving out all description of its turns and windings.
The Missouri was now flowing due north, leaving its bends out of account,
and the explorers, ascending the river, were therefore travelling south;
and although the journal sets forth "the north bank" and "the
south bank," it should be understood that west is meant by the one,
and east by the other.
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