Читать книгу Makers of American History: The Lewis and Clark Exploring Expedition - Graeme Mercer Adam - Страница 6

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The Expedition, on parting from their comrades returning down the river to St. Louis, were now to set their own faces westward, and be lost to the ken of the outer world until their own return, in September, 1806. The date on which the main party continued their exploring journey from Fort Mandan was April 8th, 1805, almost a year after leaving St. Louis. The interval was an exciting one to the little band of explorers; while it was an anxious one to their friends at home, as well as to President Jefferson and the interested members of his Administration that had seen the Expedition go forth on its thrilling but important mission. With light hearts and high enthusiasm, the little party set out on their enterprise; while all were eager to learn what might befall them in probing their dark and untrodden way over the remaining portions of the journey, across the Great Divide and down the Columbia to the Western Sea. In addition to the original members of the party, the Expedition now took with it a Frenchman interpreter, named Chaboneau, his Indian wife and infant child, the wife having been a captive of the Mandans in a war the tribe had had with the Snake Indians (the Shoshones) of the Rockies. Both husband and wife were to prove useful acquisitions to the party—the squaw especially so, as she had a gentle disposition, and was greatly attached to the whites, and hence earned much praise for herself from both leaders of the Expedition. Her name, which we shall meet with repeatedly, was Sacajawea, or, in English equivalent, the “Bird Woman.” As the Expedition set forth, Captain Lewis, in his Journal, makes the following happy reference to its appearance:

“Our vessels,” he observes, “consisted of six small canoes, and two large pirogues. This little fleet, although not quite so respectable as those of Columbus or Captain Cook, were still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs; and I daresay with quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation. We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trodden; the good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However, as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one. Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of our departure as among the most happy of my life.”

The undertaking, dear as we are told it was, to the chief leader of the Expedition, was nevertheless a serious and laborious one, as was further to be found in traversing the long and weary distance that still lay between the Upper Missouri waters and the sea. There was, however, much that was novel, as well as interesting, to the explorers as they advanced; and minute was their observation of everything they saw, not only of the physical conformation and resources of the country they passed through, but of the variety of Indian and animal life they met with; and of the sport they had in killing the game requisite for their daily sustenance. Of this game, much was new to them, including not only the familiar elk and deer, of which they had had plentiful supplies while at Fort Mandan; but also the “grizzlies” of the near-by Rockies, the burrowing gopher, mountain antelope, buffalo, beaver, otter, and the Canada wild goose, which, in these high Western latitudes, they now met large flocks of. The comparative nearness to the northern international boundary line brought the party not only to a knowledge of the Canada beaver and wild goose, but also to stray bands of the Assiniboine, of the far north, who were accustomed at this era to extend their hunting expeditions as far south as the country of the Dakotas. Of this tribe, the Assiniboines, the cruelty of which the Expedition, on its passage up the Missouri, had heard rueful tales of, the party was fortunate not to meet at close range with. The beaver and geese they did, however, meet many of, and to the delectation of all at meal-time; the beaver, as related in the explorers’ Journal, being in this part of the Missouri very plentiful, and not only met with “in greater quantities, but of a larger and fatter kind; while their fur was more abundant, and of a darker color, than any hitherto seen.”

By this time, the explorers had ascended the Missouri for some little distance, though they had made comparatively slow progress on the whole, in consequence of prevailing head-winds; while the heat, early as it was in the season, was oppressive, though before the end of April it grew cool again, and in the early mornings a hard, white frost was visible on the river’s banks. As the party advanced, we are told that many of its members now suffered from inflamed eyes, the result of exposure to the fine alkaline dust which blows over the dry, arid region the Expedition was now passing by, the habitat of the juniper tree, dwarf cedar, and wild sage bush. Here, the “Journal,” under date April 14th, gives us an account of the appearance of the country and its characteristic animal and plant life, as follows:

“The river continues wide and of about the same rapidity as the ordinary current of the Ohio. The low grounds are wide, the moister parts containing timber; the upland is extremely broken, without wood, and in some places seems as if it had slipped down in masses of several acres in surface. The mineral appearance of salts, coal, and sulphur, with the burnt hill and pumice-stone, continue, and a bituminous water about the color of strong lye, with the taste of Glauber’s salts and a slight tincture of alum. Many geese were feeding on the prairies, and a number of magpies, which build their nests much like those of the blackbird, in trees, and composed of small sticks, leaves, and grass, open at the top; the egg is of a bluish-brown color, freckled with reddish-brown spots. We also killed a large hooting-owl resembling that of the United States, except that it was more booted and clad with feathers. On the hills are many aromatic herbs, resembling in taste, smell, and appearance the sage, hyssop, wormwood, southernwood, juniper, and dwarf cedar; a plant also about two or three feet high, similar to the camphor in smell and taste (? wild sage); and another plant of the same size, with a long, narrow, smooth, soft leaf, of an agreeable smell and flavor, which is a favorite of the antelope, whose necks are often perfumed by rubbing against it.” ... “The country to-day (vide the Journal of April 18th) presented the usual variety of highlands interspersed with rich plains. In one of these we observed a species of pea bearing a yellow flower, which is now in blossom, the leaf and stalk resembling the common pea. It seldom rises higher than six inches, and the root is perennial. On the rosebushes we also saw a quantity of the hair of a buffalo, which had become perfectly white by exposure and resembled the wool of the sheep, except that it was much finer and more soft and silky. A buffalo which we killed yesterday had shed his long hair, and that which remained was about two inches long, thick, fine, and would have furnished five pounds of wool, of which we have no doubt an excellent cloth might be made. Our game to-day was a beaver, a deer, an elk, and some geese.”

The Expedition, by the indications in the current of the river, now began to near the great watercourse which the French called the Jaune, or Yellow, River. Hitherto, what is now known as the Yellowstone, which, rising in the Rockies, in the northwestern section of Wyoming, and, after a course of one thousand two hundred, or one thousand three hundred miles, flows through Montana and joins the Missouri in North Dakota near the frontier of Montana, was practically unknown, though it had been heard of from Indian hunters and stray voyageurs, and was now about to be reached and ascended a few miles by the explorers. Here the party encamped for a little while at the foot of the bluffs, at the junction of the two rivers, the navigation of the Missouri at this point being slow and toilsome, on account of the rapidity of the current and having to avoid the sandbars which here bestrew the river. Game was here found plentiful, though the party only killed what was necessary for immediate subsistence. “For several days past,” observes the Journal under date April 27, “we have seen great numbers of buffalo lying dead along the shore, some of them partly devoured by the wolves. They have either sunk through the ice during the winter, or been drowned in attempting to cross; or else, after crossing to some high bluff, have found themselves too much exhausted either to ascend or swim back again and perished for want of food; in this situation we found several small parties of them. There are geese, too, in abundance, and more bald eagles than we have hitherto observed; the nests of these last being always accompanied by those of two or three magpies, who are their inseparable attendants.”