ly, and
discharge their vernal floods into the Mississippi, an inundation would
be the consequence, that would submerge and devastate all the lower
country.

On the afternoon of the third day, January, 17th, the boats touched
at Charette, one of the old villages founded by the original French
colonists. Here they met with Daniel Boone, the renowned patriarch
of Kentucky, who had kept in the advance of civilization, and on the
borders of the wilderness, still leading a hunter's life, though now in
his eighty-fifth year. He had but recently returned from a hunting
and trapping expedition, and had brought nearly sixty beaver skins as
trophies of his skill. The old man was still erect in form, strong in
limb, and unflinching in spirit, and as he stood on the river bank,
watching the departure of an expedition destined to traverse the
wilderness to the very shores of the Pacific, very probably felt a throb
of his old pioneer spirit, impelling him to shoulder his rifle and join
the adventurous band. Boone flourished several years after this meeting,
in a vigorous old age, the Nestor of hunters and backwoodsmen; and died,
full of sylvan honor and renown, in 1818, in his ninety-second year.

The next morning early, as the party were yet encamped at the mouth of
a small stream, they were visited by another of these heroes of the
wilderness, one John Colter, who had accompanied Lewis and Clarke in
their memorable expedition. He had recently made one of those vast
internal voyages so characteristic of this fearless class of men, and of
the immense regions over which they hold their lonely wanderings; having
come from the head waters of the Missouri to St. Louis in a small canoe.
This distance of three thousand miles he had accomplished in thirty
days. Colter kept with the party all the morning. He had many
particulars to give them concerning the Blackfeet Indians, a restless
and predatory tribe, who had conceived an implacable hostility to the
white men, in consequence of one of their warriors having been killed
by Captain Lewis, while attempting to steal horses. Through the country
infested by these savages the expedition would have to proceed, and
Colter was urgent in reiterating the precautions that ought to be
observed respecting them. He had himself experienced their vindictive
cruelty, and his story deserves particular citation, as showing the
hairbreadth adventures to which these solitary rovers of the wilderness
are expo