the course of the river being now more nearly to the north,
they noted the higher and bleaker aspect of the Plains, which the
_Journal_ described as land not so good as that below the Platte. Of the
really arid country farther west, and of the uses of irrigation, the
_Journal_ knew little, and spoke of it as a desert, though now, on the
edge of the river, the clinging towns and the great ranch country back
of them, with the green fields of farms and the smokes of not infrequent
homes, warned them that the past was gone and that now another day and
land lay before them.

After many misadventures among the countless deceiving channels and bars
of the river, and after locating the several Indian villages of the past
and of to-day--the Rees, the Sioux bands, the Cheyennes--they did at
last cross the North Dakota line at the Standing Rock agency, did pass
the mouths of the Cannon Ball and Heart Rivers, and raise the smokes of
Bismarck on the right, and Mandan on the left bank, with the great
connecting railway bridge. They drove on, and at length chose their
stopping place below Mandan, on the west shore.

Now, as always at the river towns they had passed, they met many curious
and inquisitive persons, eager to know who they were, where they were
going, whence they had come, and how long they had been on the way.

"Well, sir," said Rob to one newspaperman who drove up to their little
encampment the next morning, in pursuit of a rumor he had heard that the
boat had ascended the river from its mouth, "since you ask us, we are
the perogue _Adventurer_, Company of Volunteers for Northwestern
Discovery, under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. We are in
search of winter quarters, and we hope the natives are peaceful. We have
been, to this landing, just forty-nine days, five hours and thirty-five
minutes, this second day of July."

"But that's impossible! Why, it's over a thousand miles from here to St.
Louis by water!" remarked the editor, himself a middle-aged man.

"Would you say so, sir?"

"Well, how far is it?"

"You should know, sir; you live here."

"But I never had any occasion to know or to care," smiled the visitor.

Rob smiled also. "Well, sir, according to Patrick Gass----"

"I never heard of him----"

"----who kept track of it a hundred and seventeen years ago, it's about
sixteen hundred and ten miles, though we don't figure it quite sixteen
hundred. Call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two, as th