"We are now very anxious to see the Snake Indians. After advancing
for several hundred miles into this wild and mountainous country,
we may soon expect that the game will abandon us. With no information
of the route, we may be unable to find a passage across the mountains
when we reach the head of the river - at least, such a pass as will lead
us to the Columbia. Even are we so fortunate as to find a branch
of that river, the timber which we have hitherto seen in these mountains
does not promise us any fit to make canoes, so that our chief
dependence is on meeting some tribe from whom we may procure horses.
Our consolation is that this southwest branch can scarcely head with
any other river than the Columbia; and that if any nation of Indians
can live in the mountains we are able to endure as much as they can,
and have even better means of procuring subsistence."
Chapter XII
At the Sources of the Missouri
The explorers were now (in the last days of July, 1805) at the head
of the principal sources of the great Missouri River, in the fastnesses
of the Rocky Mountains, at the base of the narrow divide that separates
Idaho from Montana in its southern corner. Just across this divide
are the springs that feed streams falling into the majestic Columbia
and then to the Pacific Ocean. As has been already set forth, they named
the Three Forks for President Jefferson and members of his cabinet.
These names still survive, although Jefferson River is the true Missouri
and not a fork of that stream.
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