It Was, Perhaps, The Only One Of The Same
Size Within Twenty Miles; And The Cottonwood Which We Are Obliged
To employ in the other parts of the work is extremely soft and brittle.
The mast of the white pirogue,
Which we mean to leave behind,
supplied us with two axle-trees.
"There are vast quantities of buffalo feeding on the plains or watering
in the river, which is also strewed with the floating carcasses and limbs
of these animals. They go in large herds to water about the falls,
and as all the passages to the river near that place are narrow and steep,
the foremost are pressed into the river by the impatience of those behind.
In this way we have seen ten or a dozen disappear over the falls in a
few minutes. They afford excellent food for the wolves, bears, and birds
of prey; which circumstance may account for the reluctance of the bears
to yield their dominion over the neighborhood.
"The pirogue was drawn up a little below our camp, and secured in a thick
copse of willow-bushes. We now began to form a cache or place of deposit,
and to dry our goods and other articles which required inspection. The wagons
are completed. Our hunters brought us ten deer, and we shot two out of a
herd of buffalo that came to water at Sulphur Spring. There is a species
of gooseberry, growing abundantly among the rocks on the sides of the cliffs.
It is now ripe, of a pale red color, about the size of the common gooseberry,
and like it is an ovate pericarp of soft pulp enveloping a number of small
whitish seeds, and consisting of a yellowish, slimy, mucilaginous substance,
with a sweet taste; the surface of the berry is covered glutinous,
adhesive matter, and its fruit, though ripe, retains its withered corolla.
The shrub itself seldom rises more than two feet high, is much branched,
and has no thorns. The leaves resemble those of the common gooseberry,
except in being smaller, and the berry is supported by separate peduncles
or foot-stalks half an inch long. There are also immense quantities
of grasshoppers, of a brown color, on the plains; they, no doubt,
contribute to the lowness of the grass, which is not generally more than
three inches high, though it is soft, narrow-leaved, and affords a fine
pasture for the buffalo."
Chapter XI
A the Heart of the Continent
Captain Clark continued his observations up the long series
of rapids and falls until he came to a group of three small
islands to which he gave the name of White Bear Islands,
from his having seen numerous white, or grizzly, bears on them.
On the nineteenth of June, Captain Clark, after a careful survey
of the country on both sides of the stream, decided that the best
place for a portage was on the south, or lower, side of the river,
the length of the portage being estimated to be about eighteen
miles, over which the canoes and supplies must be carried.
Next day he proceeded to mark out the exact route of the portage,
or carry, by driving stakes along its lines and angles.
From the survey and drawing which he made, the party now had
a clear and accurate view of the falls, cascades, and rapids
of the Missouri; and, it may be added, this draught, which is
reproduced on another page of this book, is still so correct
in all its measurements that when a Montana manufacturing
company undertook to build a dam at Black Eagle Falls,
nearly one hundred years afterwards, they discovered that their
surveys and those of Captain Clark were precisely alike.
The total fall of the river, from the White Bear Islands,
as Lewis and Clark called them, to the foot of the Great Falls,
is four hundred twelve and five-tenths feet; the sheer drop
of the Great Fall is seventy-five and five-tenths feet.
The wild, trackless prairie of Lewis and Clark's time is
now the site of the thriving town of Great Falls, which has
a population of ten thousand.
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