of their campfires clouded the north; but the boats sped on undiscovered.
"The river reminds me of the Ohio at this time of year," said Clark.
"The drumming of that sharp-tailed grouse is like that of the pheasants of old Virginia," responded Lewis.
"And the croaking of the frogs exactly resimbles that of frogs in th' Yaunited States," added Patrick Gass.
For days they noted veins of coal burning along the river banks, kindled perhaps by Indian fires. Alkali dust began to rise, blown into clouds, and sifting into their tight double-cased watches until the wheels refused to move more than a few minutes at a time.
Toward the last of April Lewis went ahead to the mouth of the Rochejaune, the Yellow Rock, or Yellowstone River, passing through herds of elk, antelope, and buffalo, so tame they would scarce move out of his way. Beautiful dun deer snorted and pawed the leaves, then half trusting, half timorous, slipped into the thicket. No one but Sacajawea had ever before been over this road.
In May they reached the land where even the beaver were gentle, for they had never been hunted. No white man, so far as they knew, had ever trodden these wilds. They had not heard of the gallant Sieur Verendrye, two of whose intrepid sons reached the "Shining Mountains" on New Year's Day, 1743. Washington was a boy then; George Rogers Clark was not born.
But the Snakes and the Sioux were at war, fierce battles were raging, and they were forced to turn back. The noble Verendrye spent all his fortune, and forty thousand livres besides, in trying to find the River of the West.
Then Jonathan Carver of Connecticut set out about the time Boone went to Kentucky. At the Falls of St. Anthony, he, too, heard of the Shining Mountains.
"The four most capital rivers of North America take their rise about the centre of this continent," said Carver. "The River Bourbon, which empties into Hudson's Bay; the Waters of St. Lawrence; the Mississippi; and the River Oregon, or the River of the West, that falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Stra
