They Set
Out The Next Morning, And The Explorers Resumed Their Toilsome Journey,
Travelling Generally In A Northwesterly Direction And Looking For A
Pass Across The Bitter Root Mountains.
Very soon, all indications
of game disappeared, and, September 14, they were forced to kill a colt,
their stock of animal food being exhausted.
They pressed on, however,
through a savage wilderness, having frequent need to recur to horse-flesh.
Here is an entry under date of September 18, in the journal:
"We melted some snow, and supped on a little portable soup, a few
canisters of which, with about twenty pounds' weight of bear's oil,
are our only remaining means of subsistence. Our guns are scarcely
of any service, for there is no living creature in these mountains,
except a few small pheasants, a small species of gray squirrel, and a blue
bird of the vulture kind, about the size of a turtle-dove, or jay.
Even these are difficult to shoot."
"A bold running creek," up which Captain Clark passed on
September 19, was appropriately named by him "Hungry Creek,"
as at that place they had nothing to eat. But, at about six miles'
distance from the head of the stream, "he fortunately found
a horse, on which he breakfasted, and hung the rest on a tree
for the party in the rear." This was one of the wild horses,
strayed from Indian bands, which they found in the wilderness,
too wild to be caught and used, but not too wild to shoot and eat.
Later, on the same day, this entry is made in the journal:
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