hind it a sheet of purest foam
across the river. The scene which it presented was indeed singularly
beautiful; since, without any of the wild, irregular sublimity of the
lower falls, it combined all the regular elegancies which the fancy of a
painter would select to form a beautiful waterfall.

The eye had scarcely been regaled with this charming prospect, when, at
the distance of half a mile, Captain Lewis observed another of a similar
kind. To this he immediately hastened, and found a cascade stretching
across the whole river for a quarter of a mile, with a descent of
fourteen feet, though the perpendicular pitch was only six feet. This,
too, in any other neighborhood, would have been an object of great
magnificence; but after what he had just seen, it became of secondary
interest; his curiosity being, however, awakened, he determined to go
on, even should night overtake him, to the head of the falls. He
therefore pursued the southwest course of the river, which was one
constant succession of rapids and small cascades, at every one of which
the bluffs grew lower, or the bed of the river became more on a level
with the plains. At the distance of two and a half miles he arrived at
another cataract of twenty-six feet. The river is here six hundred yards
wide, but the descent is not immediately perpendicular, though the river
falls generally in a regular and smooth sheet; for about one-third of
the descent a rock protrudes to a small distance, receives the water in
its passage, and gives it a curve.

On the south side is a beautiful plain, a few feet above the level of
the falls; on the north the country is more broken, and there is a
hill not far from the river. Just below the falls is a little island
in the middle of the river well covered with timber. Here, on a
cottonwood-tree, an eagle had fixed her nest, and seemed the undisputed
mistress of a spot to contest whose dominion neither man nor beast would
venture across the gulfs that surround it, and which is further secured
by the mist rising from the Falls. This solitary bird could not escape
the observation of the Indians, who made the eagle's nest a part of
their description of the Falls, and which now proves to be correct in
almost every particular, except that they did not do justice to their
height. Just above this is a cascade of about five feet, beyond which,
as far as could be discerned, the velocity of the water seemed to abate.

Captain Lewis now ascended