utaries, and from these
our bold traders pushed out by pack train into every corner of the Rocky
Mountains."

"Gee!" said Jesse, in his frequent and not elegant slang. "Gee! Those
were the days!"

"Right you are--those were the days! Those were the great days of
adventure and romance and exploration. It was through the fur trade that
we explored the Rocky Mountains. Can't you see our men of the fur posts,
paddling, rowing, sailing, tracking--getting up the Missouri? Great
days, yes, Jesse--great days indeed."

"I wish we had a picture of that old stockade!" sighed John.

"None exists. Not a splinter of it remains; it was burned down in 1805,
and the ruins later engulfed by the river. But I fancy we can see it,
from the description. So there our party spent that first winter, and
long and cold enough it was.

"They had to hunt or starve, but soon their buffalo and elk and deer
and antelope got very thin, mere skin and bones. It was bitter cold, and
the hunters came in frozen time and again--a hard, bare, bitter fight it
was. From all accounts, it was an old-fashioned winter, for the
mercury--they spelled it 'merkery'--froze solid in a few minutes one day
when they set the thermometer out of doors!"

"And it must have been cool inside the houses, too," ventured John. "But
of course they had to do their writing and fix up their things."

"Quite so--they had to get their specimens ready to ship down the river
in the spring. Then they had to make six canoes for use the next year,
and as they found the timber unsuitable near the river, the men had to
camp out where they found the trees, and then they carried the canoes by
hand over to the river, a mile and a half.

"They sent the big flatboat, or bateau, down the river, and thirteen men
went with it. The two perogues and the six new cottonwood dugouts they
took on west, up the river, when they started, on March 7, 1805, to
finish their journey across the continent. Of these men, the party who
went through, there were thirty-one; and there was one woman."

"I know!" said Jesse. "Sacagawea!"

"Right! Sacagawea. Make it two words. 'Wea' means 'woman.' 'Bird Woman'
was her name--Sacaga Wea. And of the entire party, that Indian girl--she
was only a girl, though lately married and though she started west with
a very young baby--was worth more than any man. If it had not been for
her they never would have got across.

"You see, up to this place, the Mandan towns, they h