"
Meanwhile, the party with the canoes were having a fatiguing time as
they toiled up the river. On the fourth of August, after they had made
only fifteen miles, the journal has this entry:--
"The river is still rapid, and the water, though clear, is very much
obstructed by shoals or ripples at every two hundred or three hundred
yards. At all these places we are obliged to drag the canoes over the
stones, as there is not a sufficient depth of water to float them, and
in the other parts the current obliges us to have recourse to the cord.
But as the brushwood on the banks will not permit us to walk on shore,
we are under the necessity of wading through the river as we drag the
boats. This soon makes our feet tender, and sometimes occasions severe
falls over the slippery stones; and the men, by being constantly wet,
are becoming more feeble. In the course of the day the hunters killed
two deer, some geese and ducks, and the party saw some antelopes,
cranes, beaver, and otter."
Captain Lewis had left a note for Captain Clark at the forks of the
Jefferson and Wisdom rivers. Clark's journal says:--
"We arrived at the forks about four o'clock, but, unluckily, Captain
Lewis's note had been attached to a green pole, which the beaver had cut
down, and carried off with the note on it: an accident which deprived us
of all information as to the character of the two branches of the river.
Observing, therefore, that the northwest fork was most in our direction,
we ascended it.
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