“We again saw great numbers of buffalo, elk, antelope, deer, and wolves; also eagles and other birds, among which were geese and a solitary pelican, neither of which can fly at present, as they are now shedding the feathers of their wings.  We also saw several bears, one of them the largest, except one, we had ever seen; for he measured nine feet from the nose to the extremity of the tail.  During the night a violent storm came on from the northeast with such torrents of rain that we had scarcely time to unload the canoes before they filled with water.  Having no shelter we ourselves were completely wet to the skin, and the wind and cold air made our situation very unpleasant.”

On the twelfth of August, the Lewis party met with two traders from Illinois.  These men were camped on the northeast side of the river; they had left Illinois the previous summer, and had been coming up the Missouri hunting and trapping.  Captain Lewis learned from them that Captain Clark was below; and later in that day the entire expedition was again united, Captain Clark’s party being found at a point near where Little Knife Creek enters the Missouri River.  We must now take up the narrative of Captain Clark and his adventures on the Yellowstone.

Chapter XXV —­ Adventures on the Yellowstone

The route of Captain Clark from the point where he and Captain Lewis divided their party, was rather more difficult than that pursued by the Lewis detachment.  But the Clark party was larger, being composed of twenty men and Sacajawea and her baby.  They were to travel up the main fork of Clark’s River (sometimes called the Bitter Root), to Ross’s Hole, and then strike over the great continental divide at that point by way of the pass which he discovered and which was named for him; thence he was to strike the headwaters of Wisdom River, a stream which this generation of men knows by the vulgar name of Big Hole River; from this point he was to go by the way of Willard’s Creek to Shoshonee Cove and the Two Forks of the Jefferson, and thence down that stream to the Three Forks of the Missouri, up the Gallatin, and over the divide to the Yellowstone and down that river to its junction with the Missouri, where he was to join the party of Captain Lewis.  This is the itinerary that was exactly carried out.  The very first incident set forth in the journal is a celebration of Independence Day, as follows:—­

“Friday, July 4.  Early in the morning three hunters were sent out.  The rest of the party having collected the horses and breakfasted, we proceeded at seven o’clock up the valley, which is now contracted to the width of from eight to ten miles, with a good proportion of pitch-pine, though its low lands, as well as the bottoms of the creeks, are strewn with large stones.  We crossed five creeks of different sizes, but of great depth, and so rapid that in passing the last several of the horses were driven down the