Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/194

 The great lakes, rivers, and mountains of America, which we will in our turn call the "Fair Continent," were rather found than discovered. The emigrant, seeking water for his cattle, or timber for his log hut and his fire, pitched his tent by some vast inland sea or rushing stream, unconscious that he had done more than choose well for his immediate temporal needs. Other log huts rose beside his own; the neighboring lake or river or forest received the name of the first person who turned its resources to account, or retained a corrupted form of its original Indian denomination. Peculiarities in the manners, customs, or appearance of the natives, which would have been full of significance to men such as Park or Bruce, Livingstone or Stanley, passed unnoticed by the lonely squatter of the woods, and whole chapters of discovery were left unwritten by the unconscious agents in the opening up of new tracks.

Not until the beginning of the present century can we be said to have possessed a literature of inland North American discovery, and our narrative has hitherto been culled little by little from piles of volumes dealing with other subjects than ours, and referring en passant only to geographical problems. The young states forming the infant republic had too much to do in welding into one whole the varied and often incongruous elements of which they were themselves composed, to be able to pay much attention to the enterprising spirits who went forth from among them to found new homes in the wilderness. But when the turbulent infancy was over, and what we may call the young manhood of America began under the enlightened guidance of the great Washington, first President of the United States, a new era of discovery was ushered in. The republic, no longer content with its ignorance of the course of its rivers, the height of its mountains, and the resources of its vast tracts of prairie and forest lands, began the organization of exploring expeditions. The first of these was that sent out, under Major Pike, in 1805, with instructions "to explore the Upper Mississippi, to inquire into the nature and extent of the fur-trade, with the residence and population of the several Indian nations, and to make every effort to conciliate their friendship."

Pike embarked on the Mississippi at Fort Louis, a little below the mouth of the Missouri, on the 9th August, 1805, in a keel-boat about seventy feet long, accompanied by an escort of twenty soldiers, and after successfully navigating the somewhat difficult current, then much impeded by sand-bars, he reached the mouth of the Missouri in safety. Above its junction with