ey
benighted. Spreading mats on the sand, they slept in the drenching rain.
Unused to ocean waters, the inland voyageurs became deadly seasick.
Once, when all were encamped on the shore, an enormous tidal wave broke
over the camp with a smashing of log-drift that almost crushed the boats.
Nez Perces and Flatheads had assisted the white men after the Snake
guides had turned back. Clatsops and Chinooks were now their neighbors.
Christmas and New Year of 1806 were celebrated by a discharge of
firearms. No boats chanced to touch at the Columbia during the winter.
The time was passed laying up store of elk meat and leather; for the
company was not only starving, but nearly naked. The Pacific had been
reached on November 14, 1805. Fort Clatsop was evacuated on the
afternoon of March 23, 1806.

The goods left to trade for food and horses when Lewis and Clark departed
from the coast inland had dwindled to what could have been tied in two
handkerchiefs; but necessity proved the mother of invention, and the men
cut the brass buttons from their tattered clothes and vended brass
trinkets to the Indians. The medicine-chest was also sacrificed, every
Indian tribe besieging the two captains for eye-water, fly-blisters, and
other patent wares. The poverty of the white man roused the insolence of
the natives on the return over the mountains. Rocks were rolled down on
the boatmen at the worst _portages_ by aggressive Indians; and once, when
the hungry _voyageurs_ were at a meal of dog meat, an Indian impudently
flung a live pup straight at Captain Lewis' plate. In a trice the pup
was back in the fellow's face; Lewis had seized a weapon; and the
crestfallen aggressor had taken ignominiously to his heels. When they
had crossed the mountains, the forces divided into three parties, two to
go east by the Yellowstone, one under Lewis by the main Missouri.

Somewhere up the height of land that divides the southern waters of the
Saskatchewan from the northern waters of the Missouri, the tracks of
Minnetaree warriors were found. These were the most murderous raiders of
the plains. Over a swell of the prairie Lewis was startled to see a band
of thirty horses, half of them saddled. The Indians were plainly on the
war-path, for no women were in camp; so Lewis took out his flag and
advanced unfalteringly. An Indian came forward. Lewis and the chief
shook hands, but Lewis now had no presents to pacify hostiles. Camping
with the Minnet