didn't know where they were going or how they would get across."

"They did worry, more than they had till then. Now, I think they must
have had quite a lot of stuff along, all the time. They had whisky, for
instance--they drank the last of it right here at the Great Falls, and
Uncle Dick says that was the first time Montana went dry! They had a
grindstone. And they had an iron boat--or the iron frame of a
boat--brought it all the way from Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, where
Lewis had it made.

"That boat was the only bad play they made. She was Lewis's pet. I don't
know why they never set her up before, but, anyhow, they did, at the
head of the falls here. She had iron rods for gunwales, and they spliced
willows to stiffen her. She was thirty-six feet long, and four and
one-half feet beam, a couple of feet deep, and would carry all their
cargo, while a few men could carry her. You see, Lewis had the skin-boat
coracle in mind before he left Washington.

"Well, Lewis wanted elk-hides for his boat, and the elk were scarce; he
had his men out everywhere after elk-hides. He got twenty-eight hides,
and took off the hair, and that wasn't enough; so he took four
buffalo-hides to piece her out. And then she wouldn't do! No. Failure;
the first and only failure of a Lewis and Clark outdoor idea.

"Well, Lewis was fair enough, though it mortified him to lose days and
days on his pet boat. They sewed the skins with edged awls, and that cut
the holes rather big, so when the hides dried and shrunk, the threads
didn't fill the holes any more. He had no tar to pay the seams with, or
he'd have been all right. They tried tallow and ashes, but it wouldn't
work. For a few minutes she sat high and light; then the filling soaked
out. Poor Lewis!--he had to give it up. So they buried her, somewhere
opposite the White Bear Islands, I suppose, where they had their camp."

"Yes, and then Clark had to go and hustle cottonwood for some more
dugouts, and cottonwood was a long, long way off," contributed John.
"Oh, they had their troubles. Hah! We complained, coming up Portage
Creek, and over the heads of the draws, trying to find their old portage
trail. What if we'd been in moccasins? What if we'd been packing a
hundred pounds or dragging at a hide wagon rope? And what if the buffalo
had cut up the ground in rainy times, so it dried in little pointed
lumps like so many nails--how'd that go in moccasins? Well, they had to
lie down and rest, it