Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 7).djvu/186

 fortunate enough to escape being scalped by the Indians, they would assuredly be doomed, like Nebuchadnezzar, to eat grass, and never would return to tell the sad tale of their destruction.

While Mr. Hunt's affairs thus seemed almost at a stand, a new impulse was given to the expedition by the timely acquisition of another partner, a Mr. Miller, who had been a trader up the Missouri, had considerable experience among Indians along the route to be followed, and was a great favourite with the people at St. Louis. As soon, therefore, as Mr. Miller joined the expedition, people from all quarters began again to enlist under the banner of the new company. Canoemen, hunters, trappers, and interpreters were no longer wanting, and the number of each being completed, the expedition left St. Louis, after a vexatious delay of forty-eight days.

On the 21st of October the expedition started {177} in three boats, and soon after reached the mouth of the Missouri, up which the party proceeded. Our Canadian voyageurs were now somewhat out of their usual element. Boats and oars, the mode of navigating the great rivers of the south, were new to men who had been brought up to the paddle, the cheering song, and the bark canoe of the north. They detested the heavy and languid drag of a Mississippi boat, and sighed for the paddle and song of former days. They soon, however, became expert at the oar, and Mr. Hunt, who was somewhat partial to the south men, was forced to acknowledge that their merits were not to be compared to the steady, persevering, habits of the men of the north. Yet the progress was but slow, scarcely averaging twenty-one miles a day, so that it was the 16th of November before they reached the Nodowa, a distance of only 450 miles up the Missouri, and there,