Part 17 (2/2)

”And we jumped it!” said Jesse.

”Yes, because I knew we'd save time, and we have to do that, for we're not out for two years, you see.

”Now look at your notes and at the _Journal_. It took Lewis and Clark thirty-five days to get here from the mouth of the Yellowstone, and we've done it in one, you might say. The railroad calls it three hundred and sixty-seven miles.”

”Well, the _Journal_ calls it more,” broke in Rob, ”yet it sticks right to the river.”

”And now they began to travel,” added John. ”They did twenty--eighteen--twenty-five--seventeen miles a day right along, more'n they did below Mandan, a lot.

”They make it six hundred and forty-one miles from the Yellowstone to the Marias, which is below where we are now. That's about eighteen miles a day. Yet they all say the river current is much stiffer.”

”We'd have found it stiff in places,” said their leader. ”But the reason they did so well--on paper--was that now they couldn't sail the canoes very well, and so did a great deal of towing. The sh.o.r.es were full of sharp rocks and the going was rough, and they had only moccasins--they complained bitterly of sore feet.

”Their hards.h.i.+ps made them overestimate the distances they did--and they did overestimate them, very much. When we were tracking up on the Rat Portage, in the ice water, at the Arctic Circle, don't you remember we figured on double what we had actually done? A man's wife corrected him on how long they had been married. He said it was twenty years, and she said it was ten, by the records. 'Well, it seems longer,' he said. Same way, when they did ten miles a day stumbling on the tracking line, they called it twenty. It seemed longer.

”Now, when the river commission measured these distances accurately, they called it seventeen hundred and sixty miles from the mouth of the river to the mouth of the Yellowstone, and not eighteen hundred, as the _Journal_ has it. And from Buford to Benton, by river, is not six hundred and forty-one miles, as the _Journal_ makes it, but only five hundred and three. So the first white men through those canons and palisades below us yonder were one hundred and thirty-eight miles over in their estimates, or more than one-fourth of the real distance.

”This tendency to overestimate distances is almost universal among explorers who set the first distances, and it ought to be reckoned as a factor of error, like the dip of the magnetic needle. But they did their best. And we want to remember that they were the first white men to come up this river, whereas we are the last!”

”Anyhow,” resumed Rob, ”we are at old Benton now.”

”Yes, and I think even Jesse will agree, when we stop to sum up here, that this is a central point in every way, and more worth while as a standing place that any we would have pa.s.sed in the river had we run it.

”This is the heart of the buffalo country, and the heart of the old Blackfoot hunting range--the most dreaded of all the tribes the early traders met. We're above the breaks of the Missouri right here. Look at the vast Plains. This was the buffalo pasture of the Blackfeet. The Crows lay below, on the Yellowstone.

”Now as they came up through the Bad Lands and the upper breaks of the big river, the explorers gave names to a lot of creeks and b.u.t.tes, most of which did not stick. Two of them did stick--the Judith and the Marias. Clark called the first Judith's river, after Miss Julia Hanc.o.c.k, of Virginia, the lady whom he later married. Her friends all called her Judy, and Clark figured it ought to be Judith.

”In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now are standing, Maria's River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark's river, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of the Judith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That of Meriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River, without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the names of two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the water runs or the gra.s.s grows, as the Indians say.”

”But even now you've forgotten something, Uncle d.i.c.k,” interrupted John.

”You said this was the Forks of the Road. How do you mean?”

”Yes. This later proved one of the great strategic points of the West.

As you know, this was the head of steamboat navigation, and the outfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country west and south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is not all.

”I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth of the Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, the Marias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, and you had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two rivers and didn't have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest to the Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed--now, what would you do?”

”Huh!” answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. ”I know what I'd have done.”

”Yes? What, then?”

”Why, I'd have asked that Indian girl, Sacagawea, that's what I'd have done. She knew all this country, you say.”

”By Jove! Not a bit bad, Jess, come to think of it. But look at your _Journal_. You'll find that at precisely the first time they needed to ask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here to above the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it's a wonder she didn't, when you read what all they gave her by way of medicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never asked her a thing on the choice of these rivers!

”Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, and it was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork a little way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, was the true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which was clearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twenty miles farther, he'd have been at the Great Falls; and the Minnetaree Indians had told of those falls, and of an eagle's nest there, though they said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never been here. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help.

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