passing down the river.
Then some one remembered who these worn _voyageurs_ were, and cheers of
welcome made the cliffs of the Missouri ring. On September 23d, at
midday, the boats drew quietly up to the river front of St. Louis. Lewis
and Clark, the greatest pathfinders of the United States, had returned
from the discovery of a new world as large as half Europe, without losing
a single man but Sergeant Floyd, who had died from natural causes a few
months after leaving St. Louis. What Radisson had begun in 1659-1660,
what De la Verendrye had attempted when he found the way barred by the
Rockies--was completed by Lewis and Clark in 1805. It was the last act
in that drama of heroes who carved empire out of wilderness; and all
alike possessed the same hero-qualities--courage and endurance that were
indomitable, the strength that is generated in life-and-death grapple
with naked primordial reality, and that reckless daring which defies life
and death. Those were hero-days; and they produced hero-types, who flung
themselves against the impossible--and conquered it. What they conquered
we have inherited. It is the Great Northwest.

[Illustration: Indians of the Up-country or _Pays d'en Haut_.]

[1] Mention of this man is to be found in Northwest Company manuscripts,
lately sold in the Masson collection of documents to the Canadian
Archives and McGill College Library. It was also my good fortune--while
this book was going to print--to see the entire family collection of
Clark's letters, owned by Mrs. Julia Clark Voorhis of New York. Among
these letters is one to Chaboneau from Clark. In spite of the cordial
relations between the Nor'westers and Lewis and Clark, these fur traders
cannot conceal their fear that this trip presages the end of the fur
trade.

APPENDIX

For the very excellent translations of the almost untranslatable
transcripts taken from the Marine Archives of Paris, and forwarded to
me by the Canadian Archives, I am indebted to Mr. R. Roy, of the Marine
Department, Ottawa, the eminent authority on French Canadian
genealogical matters.

Some of the topics in the Appendices are of such a controversial
nature--the whereabouts of the Mascoutins, for instance--that at my
request Mr. Roy made the translation absolutely literal no matter how
incongruous the wording. To those who say Radisson was not on the
Missouri I commend Appendix E, where the tribes of the West are
described.

A