At the
distance of three hundred yards from the same ridge is a second abutment
of solid perpendicular rock, about sixty feet high, projecting at right
angles from the small plain on the north for one hundred and thirty-four
yards into the river. After leaving this, the Missouri again spreads
itself to its previous breadth of three hundred yards, though with more
than its ordinary rapidity."
One of Lewis's men was sent back to inform Captain Clark of this
momentous discovery, which finally settled all doubt as to which was
the true Missouri. The famous Great Falls of the river had been finally
reached. Captain Lewis next went on to examine the rapids above the
falls. The journal says:--
"After passing one continued rapid and three cascades, each three or
four feet high, he reached, at the distance of five miles, a second
fall. The river is here about four hundred yards wide, and for the
distance of three hundred rushes down to the depth of nineteen feet, and
so irregularly that he gave it the name of the Crooked Falls. From the
southern shore it extends obliquely upward about one hundred and fifty
yards, and then forms an acute angle downward nearly to the commencement
of four small islands close to the northern side. From the perpendicular
pitch to these islands, a distance of more than one hundred yards, the
water glides down a sloping rock with a velocity almost equal to that
of its fall: above this fall the river bends suddenly to the northward.
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