could hardly have been so sweet to the taste of our hardy exploring party as the ice-cold draught of living water dipped from the mountain reservoirs whose streams "flowed towards the west." With equal pride must they have launched their frail canoes on that river which now bears the name of the chief of the expedition. As they descended to the junction with the northern branch, and found themselves at last fairly embarked on the main Columbia, when they beheld the beauty and magnitude of this King of Rivers, and remembered that their errand, so successfully carried out, was to find a "highway for commerce," their toils and privations must have appeared to them rather in the light of pleasures than of griefs. As the first party of white men to pass through the magnificent mountain-gap where the great river breaks through the Cascade Range, and to meet the tides of the Pacific just on the westward side, the party of Lewis and Clarke have won, and ever must retain, an honorable renown.
The voyage from this point to the mouth of the Columbia was soon accomplished. On the 15th of November the expedition landed at Cape Hancock, commonly called "Disappointment," on the north side of the river, having travelled a distance of more than four thousand miles from the Mississippi River. The rainy season, which usually sets in about the 18th of November, had already commenced, so that our explorers had some difficulty in finding a suitable winter camping-ground. At first they tried the peninsula north of Cape Hancock, but were driven from their ground by the floods. Then they resorted to the south side of the river, somewhat farther back from the ocean, building a log fort on a small stream which is still called "Lewis and Clarke River." There they contrived to pass the winter without actual starvation, though they were often threatened with it, from the difficulty of obtaining food at this season of the year. Game was scarce, except in the coast mountains, which are very rugged and thickly wooded; while fishing could not be carried on successfully except with other boats than their slight canoes, which were entirely unfit for the winter winds and waves of the lower Columbia. The Indians among whom they wintered called themselves "Clatsops," and were sufficiently friendly, but had no food to spare, save at the
