heavy river, you've got to put on the power, I'm telling you."

"Yes, sir," nodded Rob. "They knew they had to travel now. About all
they had to go on was the girl Sacagawea's word that pretty soon they'd
come to her people.

"So they set out from here on July 15th, the very day that we will, if
we get off to-morrow; only it took them one year more to get here than
it did us. And two men were in each canoe--not enough to drive her, they
found. And Lewis and the girl walked on this side the river, and after a
while Clark walked on the other side--all on foot, of course. He had
Fields and Potts and his servant York with him--all alone in the Indian
country, of which not one of them knew a foot.

"And now," went on Rob, "they were once more against that same old very
risky proposition of a divided party, part in boats and part on shore. I
tell you, and we ought to know it, from our own experiences up North,
that that's the easiest way to get into trouble that any wilderness
travelers could think up. They simply had marvelous luck. For instance,
after Clark left them above here, on July 18th, he never saw them
oftener than once a day again until July 22d, and that was away up at
the head of the big Canyon.

"To the Three Forks was two hundred and fifty-two and one-half miles, as
Clark called it, though engineers now say it is only two hundred and ten
miles. He walked clean around the big Canyon of the Missouri at the Gate
of the Mountains--below Helena, that is--and never saw it at all! Now if
you say he walked the whole ten days from the head of the falls to the
Forks, and say it was only two hundred and ten miles and not over two
hundred and fifty, that's over twenty miles a day, on foot, in the
mountains, under pack and a heavy rifle, in moccasins, and over
prickly-pear country that got their feet full of thorns. Clark pulled
out seventeen spines, broken off in his feet, one day when he stopped.

"Now that takes good men to do that. Not many sportsmen of to-day could
do it, I know that. And yet, after four days' absence spent in this wild
country where they were the first white men, they met again at the head
of the Canyon below the Forks, just as easy and as natural as if they had
telephoned to each other every day! I call that exploring! I call those
chaps great men!"

"Reader will suppose one hundred years to have elapsed," drawled Jesse,
again. "I'd telephone Uncle Dick now, if I knew where he was."

"Leave