route over the Continental
Divide where wagons could not travel. Later, most of those who remained,
decided to go down the Jefferson River in canoes; but Clark still guided
by the plucky Indian girl, persisted in fighting his way on pony back
overland, and after a week of this journeying, crowded full of
discomforts and dangers, she brought him out in triumph at the
Yellowstone, where the river bursts out from the lower canon,--and the
Great Northwest was opened up for all time!

* * * * *

The women of Oregon have raised a statue to this young explorer, and
there she stands in Portland, facing the Coast, pointing to the Columbia
River where it reaches the sea.

These great virtues of daring and endurance never die out of the race;
though the conditions of our life today, when most of the exploring has
been done, do not demand them of us in just the form the "Bird Woman"
needed, still, if they die out of the nation, and especially out of the
women of the nation, something has been lost that no amount of book
education can ever replace. Sacajawea, had no maps to study--she _made_
maps, and roads have been built over her footsteps. And so we Scouts,
not to lose this great spirit, study the stars and the sun and the trees
and try to learn a few of the wood secrets she knew so well. This
out-of-door wisdom and self-reliance was the first great principle of
Scouting.

THE HOMEMAKER

But of course, a country full of "Bird Women" could not be said to have
advanced very far in civilization. Though we should take great pleasure
in conferring her well-earned merit badges on Sacajawea, we should
hardly have grown into the great organization we are today if we had not
badges for quite another class of achievements.

In 1832, not so many years after the famous Lewis and Clark expedition,
there was born a little New England girl who would very early in life
have become a First Class Scout if she had had the opportunity. Her name
was Louisa Alcott, and she made that name famous all the world over by
the book by which the world's girls know her--"Little Women." Her
father, though a brilliant man, was a very impractical one, and from her
first little story to her last popular book, all her work was done for
the purpose of keeping her mother and sisters, in comfort. While she was
waiting for the money from her stories she turned carpets, trimmed hats,
papered the rooms, made party dresses for her s