d miles Clark scouted down the headwaters of the Salmon
River, and at last turned back, to report that neither horse nor boat
ever could get through. At the Shoshone village, uneasy, the men were
waiting for him.

"That way!" said Sacajawea, still pointing north.

The Indian guide, who had served Clark unwillingly, at length admitted
that there was a trail leading across the mountains far up to the
northward.

"We will go north," said Lewis.

They cached under the ashes of their camp fire such remaining articles
as they could leave behind them. They had now a band of fifty horses.
Partly mounted, mostly on foot, their half wild horses burdened, they
set out once more under the guidance of an old Shoshone, who said he
knew the way.

Charbonneau wanted to remain with the Shoshones, and to keep with him
Sacajawea, his wife, so recently reunited to her people.

"No!" said Sacajawea. "I no go back--I go with the white chief to the
water that tastes salt!" And it was so ordered.

Their course lay along the eastern side of the lofty Bitter Root
Mountains. The going was rude enough, since no trail had ever been
here; but mile after mile, day after day, they stumbled through to
some point on ahead which none knew except the guide. They came on a
new tribe of Indians--Flatheads, who were as amazed and curious as the
Shoshones had been at the coming of these white men. They received the
explorers as friends--asked them to tarry, told them how dangerous it
was to go into the mountains.

But haste was the order of the day, and they left the Flatheads,
rejoicing that these also told of streams to the westward up which the
salmon came. They had heard of white men, too, to the west, many years
before.

Down the beautiful valley of the Bitter Root River, with splendid
mountains on either side, they pressed on, and on the ninth of
September, 1805, they stopped at the mouth of a stream coming down
from the heights to the west. Their old guide pointed up this valley.

"There is a trail," said he, "which comes across here. The Indians
come to reach the buffalo. On the farther side the water runs toward
the sunset."

They were at the eastern extremity of that ancient trail, later called
the Lolo Trail, known immemorially to the tribes on both sides of the
mountains. Laboriously, always pressing forward, they ascended the
eastern slopes of the great range, crossed the summit, found the clear
waters on the west side, and so came