Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/33

Rh defeated—Mr. Harmon proceeding no further than the Mandan villages, while Lewis and Clarke prosecuted their undertaking with diligence, leaving the Mandan country on the 7th of April, 1805, and arriving at the Great Falls of the Missouri on the 13th of June. The reader need not be reminded of the difficulties attending such a journey as the one undertaken by our exploring party: when, the course of navigation being interrupted, boats had to be abandoned, toilsome portages made, new boats constructed, and all the novel hardships of the wilderness endured. Such tests of courage have been encountered by thousands since that time, in the settlement of the Pacific Coast; but that fact does not lessen the glory which attaches to the fame of the great pioneers commissioned to discover the hidden sources of America's greatest rivers. Those faithful services secured to us inestimable blessings, in extended territories, salubrious climates, and exhaustless wealth of natural resources.

Lewis and Clarke, having re-embarked in canoes hollowed out of logs, arrived at the Gate of the Mountains on the 19th of July, in the very neighborhood where thousands of men are to-day probing the earth for her concealed treasures of gold and silver. Proceeding on to the several forks of the Missouri—the Jefferson, the Madison, and the Gallatin—and finding themselves in the midst of the mountains, the two captains left a portion of their men to explore the largest of these, while they, with the remainder of the party, pushed on through the mountains until they came to streams flowing toward the west. At this intimation that their labors were about to be crowned with success, they rejoined their party at the head of the Jefferson Fork, and prepared for the rugged work