ssouri, we will now accompany these gentlemen
in their journey across the Rocky Mountains, and in their subsequent
navigation of the Oregan or Columbia to the Pacific Ocean.

They had reached the highest ground in the _Rocky Mountains_, or that
elevated part of the continent which constitutes the boundary between
the streams flowing to the Atlantic on the one side, and the Pacific on
the other. Their next object was to prosecute their journey westward,
through this cold and barren track, until they should come to a
navigable stream flowing into the Columbia, the great channel of access
to the western ocean.

They had been told, by Indians in the Mandan country, that, immediately
on crossing the central ridge, they would discover copious rivers
running in a direction towards the Columbia. Captain Lewis accordingly
found a clear stream forty yards wide, and three feet deep, which ran
towards the west. It was bounded on each side by a range of high
mountains, and was so closely confined between them, as not only to be
unnavigable, but to be impassable along its banks. A still more
discouraging circumstance was the total want, in this wintry region, of
timber fit for building canoes.

An old Indian, being consulted respecting these mountains, stated them
to be so inaccessible, that neither he nor any of his nation had ever
attempted to cross them; and another Indian, a native of the south-west
mountains, described them in terms scarcely less terrific. The course to
the Pacific lay, he said, along rocky steeps, inhabited by savages, who
lived in holes, like bears, and fed on roots and on horse-flesh. On
descending from the mountainous ridge, he stated that the traveller
would find himself in a parched desert of sand, where no animals, of a
nature to afford subsistence, could be discovered; and, although this
plain was crossed by a large river running towards the Columbia, its
banks had no timber for the construction of canoes.

After all these mortifying communications, there appeared to be left, to
the present travellers, only one route, that by which some individuals
of the Chopunnish Indians, living to the west of the mountains, find
means to make their way to this elevated region; and the accounts that
had been given of this road, were very discouraging; the Indians being
obliged to subsist for many days on berries, and suffering greatly from
hunger. The commanders of the expedition were not, however,
disheartened; f