“We are now very anxious to see the Snake Indians.  After advancing for several hundred miles into this wild and mountainous country, we may soon expect that the game will abandon us.  With no information of the route, we may be unable to find a passage across the mountains when we reach the head of the river—­at least, such a pass as will lead us to the Columbia.  Even are we so fortunate as to find a branch of that river, the timber which we have hitherto seen in these mountains does not promise us any fit to make canoes, so that our chief dependence is on meeting some tribe from whom we may procure horses.  Our consolation is that this southwest branch can scarcely head with any other river than the Columbia; and that if any nation of Indians can live in the mountains we are able to endure as much as they can, and have even better means of procuring subsistence.”

Chapter XII —­ At the Sources of the Missouri

The explorers were now (in the last days of July, 1805) at the head of the principal sources of the great Missouri River, in the fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, at the base of the narrow divide that separates Idaho from Montana in its southern corner.  Just across this divide are the springs that feed streams falling into the majestic Columbia and then to the Pacific Ocean.  As has been already set forth, they named the Three Forks for President Jefferson and members of his cabinet.  These names still survive, although Jefferson River is the true Missouri and not a fork of that stream.  Upon the forks of the Jefferson Lewis bestowed the titles of Philosophy, Wisdom, and Philanthropy, each of these gifts and graces being, in his opinion, “an attribute of that illustrious personage, Thomas Jefferson,” then President of the United States.  But alas for the fleeting greatness of geographical honor!  Philosophy River is now known as Willow Creek, and at its mouth, a busy little railroad town, is Willow City.  The northwest fork is no longer Wisdom, but Big Hole River; deep valleys among the mountains are known as holes; and the stream called by that name, once Wisdom, is followed along its crooked course by a railroad that connects Dillon, Silver Bow, and Butte City, Montana.  Vulgarity does its worst for Philanthropy; its modern name on the map is Stinking Water.

On the thirtieth of July, the party, having camped long enough to unpack and dry their goods, dress their deerskins and make them into leggings and moccasins, reloaded their canoes and began the toilsome ascent of the Jefferson.  The journal makes this record:—­