"The River Immediately At This Cascade Is Three Hundred Yards Wide,
And Is Pressed In 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 falls. For ninety or one hundred yards 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,
but being received as it falls by the irregular and somewhat projecting
rocks below, forms a splendid prospect 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 of 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 deserted 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."
One of Lewis's men was sent back to inform Captain Clark of this
momentous discovery, which finally settled all doubt as to which was the
true Missouri. The famous Great Falls of the river had been finally reached.
Captain Lewis next went on to examine the rapids above the falls.
The journal says: -
"After passing one continued rapid and three cascades, each three
or four feet high, he reached, at the 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 55 of 201
Words from 29605 to 30137
of 110166
