d down to the point usually
believed to be that where the "White Bear" camp of Lewis and Clark was
pitched above the falls. Here the great river was wide and more quiet,
as though making ready for its great plunges below. Not far from the
railway tracks they put up their temporary camp, as the pack horses had
not yet arrived.

"The reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed!" said Jesse,
sarcastically. "All right; but I want something besides fried eggs and
marmalade."

"Easy now, Jess," rejoined his older friend. "Leave that to Uncle Dick.
He told me he was going to get us some sport within ten days from
here--fishing, I mean--trout, and even grayling. Of course, at this
season there'd be nothing to shoot. Lewis and Clark killed all sorts of
game at all sorts of seasons, but they had to do that to live. They had
thirty-two people in their party, all working hard and eating plenty.
They would eat a whole buffalo every day, or a couple of elk, so
somebody had to be busy. It would have taken a lot of fried eggs and
marmalade to put them up and over those rapids. But as you say, we've
got to suppose a hundred years to have elapsed, so we don't kill a
buffalo every day."

"I could eat half of one, any day!" said John. "I get awfully hungry,
just from fighting the mosquitoes."

"I'll bet they were bad enough. The old _Journal_ says more about
mosquitoes than any other hardship. Even Gass in his journal tells how
bad they were here at the Great Falls--I think they feared them more
than they did the white bears or the rattlesnakes; and they had plenty
of them all. In one day Lewis was chased into the river by a grizzly,
charged by three buffalo bulls, and nearly bitten by a rattler!"

"Must have been a busy day!" said John.

"Well, I expect every day was busy for them. For instance, when they got
to this camp for the upper headquarters, they had to build two more
canoes, ten miles above here. That made eight in all for the thirty-two
people, or four to a canoe. I don't think they ever carried that many
with their cargo; and they had quite a lot of cargo, even then. They
were eating pork on the Continental Divide--their last pork!"

"No," said Jesse, "they never did all ride at once. First one captain
went ahead on foot, then the other. You see, they got into mountain
water pretty soon now. They used the tow line a great deal, or poled the
boats rather than paddled. Comes to getting a heavily loaded boat up a