Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/75



The start. La Charette. By the 14th of May the final touches had been given to the preparations, and the exploring party commenced the historic journey across the continent. Their supplies, instruments, articles for trade and presents for the Indians were carried in a flotilla consisting of three boats: one was a keel boat of twenty-two oars, with deck, sail, and breastworks; the other two were small craft, of six and seven oars respectively. Many of the leading citizens of St. Louis turned out to see them off. As the boats toiled up the swift-flowing Missouri they were often hailed from the banks by groups of French settlers, and sometimes by companies of Americans who were already beginning to emigrate to this newly opened region of the West. At St. Charles they made a halt of several days, and it was not till the 25th of May that the explorers passed La Charette, the home of Daniel Boone, and the last settlement on the Missouri. From this point their path lay wholly within the Indian country.

They meet up-river traders. On the 5th of June they "met a raft of two canoes joined together, in which two French traders were descending from eighty leagues up the Kansas River, where they had wintered and caught great quantities of beaver." Nine days later they encountered another party of traders coming down from the Platte. The 4th of July was celebrated by the firing of the big gun, and apparently in other ways, for one of the journalists says that a man was snake-bitten.