States, after the Revolutionary War. They still continued to hunt and trap, and had established their trading-posts in all that country lying about the head-waters of the Mississippi; and their employees were scattered throughout the region east of the Missouri, and west of the Lakes, even having penetrated, on one occasion, to the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
It happened that, while Lewis and Clarke were at the Mandan villages, the fact of their visit, and the object of it, which had been explained to the Indians, were communicated to some members of the Northwest Company, who had a post about three days' journey from there. So much alarmed was Mr. Chaboillez, who resided at this post, that he wrote immediately to another partner, Mr. D. W. Harmon, a native of New England, and, upon receiving a visit from him, urged Mr. Harmon to set out in the following spring upon the same route pursued by Lewis and Clarke, accompanied by Indian guides, doubtless with the intention of arriving at the head-waters of the Missouri, in advance of the American expedition; but in this praiseworthy strife for precedence they were in this instance 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-
