It Draws Its Main Supplies, By Several Forks
Or Branches, From The Rocky Mountains.
The mouth of this river is
established as the dividing point between the upper and lower
Missouri; and the earlier voyagers, in their toilsome ascent,
before the introduction of steamboats, considered one-half of
their labors accomplished when they reached this place.
The
passing of the mouth of the Nebraska, therefore, was equivalent
among boatmen to the crossing of the line among sailors, and was
celebrated with like ceremonials of a rough and waggish nature,
practiced upon the uninitiated; among which was the old nautical
joke of shaving. The river deities, however, like those of the
sea, were to be propitiated by a bribe, and the infliction of
these rude honors to be parried by a treat to the adepts.
At the mouth of the Nebraska new signs were met with of war
parties which had recently been in the vicinity. There was the
frame of a skin canoe, in which the warriors had traversed the
river. At night, also, the lurid reflection of immense fires hung
in the sky, showing the conflagration of great tracts of the
prairies. Such fires not being made by hunters so late in the
season, it was supposed they were caused by some wandering war
parties. These often take the precaution to set the prairies on
fire behind them to conceal their traces from their enemies. This
is chiefly done when the party has been unsuccessful, and is on
the retreat and apprehensive of pursuit.
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