to the Kooskooskie or Clearwater
River, leading to the Snake. And always the natives marveled at these
white men, the first they ever had seen.

The old Indians still made maps on the sand for them, showing them how
they would come to the great river where the salmon came. They were
now among yet another people--the Nez Perces. With these also they
smoked and counciled, and learned that it would be easy for boats to
go all the way down to the great river which ran to the sea.

"We will leave our horses here," said Lewis. "We will take to the
boats once more."

So Gass and Bratton and Shields and all the other artisans fell to
fashioning dugouts from the tall pines and cedars, hewing and burning
and shaping, until at length they had transports for their scanty
store of goods. By the first week of October they were at the junction
of their river with the Snake. An old medicine man of the Nez Perces,
Twisted Hair, a man who also could make maps, had drawn them charts on
a white skin with a bit of charcoal. And on ahead, mounted runners of
the Indians rushed down to inform the tribes of the coming of these
strange people.

It was no longer an exploration, but a reception for them now. Bands
of red men, who welcomed them, had heard of white men coming up from
the sea. White men had once lived by the Tim-Tim water, on the great
river of the salmon--so they had been told; but never had any living
Indian heard of white men coming across the great mountains from the
sunrise.

"Will," said Lewis, "it is done--we are safe now! We shall be first
across to the Columbia. This--" he shook the Nez Perces' scrawled
hide--"is the map of a new world!"

CHAPTER VIII

TRAIL'S END

Where lately had been gloom and despair there now reigned joy and
confidence. With the great mountains behind them, and this new,
pleasant and gentle land all around them, the spirits of the men rose
buoyantly.

They could float easily down the strong current of the great Snake
River, laboring but little, if at all. They made long hours every day,
and by the middle of autumn they saw ahead of them a yet grander flood
than that of the noble river which was bearing them.

At last they had found the Columbia! They had found what Mackenzie
never found, what Fraser was not to find--that great river, now to be
taken over with every right of double discovery by these messengers of
the young republic. How swelled their hearts, when at last they knew