It Requires Some Diligence To Supply Us Plentifully,
For As We Reserve Our Parched Meal For The Rocky Mountains,
Where
We do not expect to find much game, our principal article
of food is meat, and the consumption of the
Whole thirty-two persons
belonging to the party amounts to four deer, an elk and a deer,
or one buffalo, every twenty-four hours. 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. Buffalo were observed in great numbers.
Many obstacles to navigating the river were encountered.
Under date of July 17, the journal says:
"The navigation is now very laborious. The river is deep,
but with little current, and from seventy to one hundred yards wide;
the low grounds are very narrow, with but little timber, and that chiefly
the aspen tree. The cliffs are steep, and hang over the river so much
that often we could not cross them, but were obliged to pass and repass
from one side of the river to the other, in order to make our way.
In some places the banks are formed of dark or black granite rising
perpendicularly to a great height, through which the river seems,
in the progress of time, to have worn its channel.
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