of the men limping from festered feet. Yet
not one word of complaint was uttered; and once, when the men were camped
on a green along the _portage_, a _voyageur_ got out his fiddle, and the
sore feet danced, which was more wholesome than moping or poulticing.
The boldness of the grizzlies was now explained. Antelope and buffalo
were carried over the falls. The bears prowled below for the carrion.

After failure to construct good hide boats, two other craft, twenty-five
and thirty-three feet long, were knocked together, and the crews launched
above the rapids for the far Shining Mountains that lured like a
mariner's beacon. Night and day, when the sun was hot, came the
boom-boom as of artillery from the mountains. The _voyageurs_ thought
this the explosion of stones, but soon learned to recognize the sound of
avalanche and land-slide. The river became narrower, deeper, swifter, as
the explorers approached the mountains. For five miles rocks rose on
each side twelve hundred feet high, sheer as a wall. Into this shadowy
canon, silent as death, crept the boats of the white men, vainly
straining their eyes for glimpse of egress from the watery defile. A
word, a laugh, the snatch of a _voyageur's_ ditty, came back with elfin
echo, as if spirits hung above the dizzy heights spying on the intruders.
Springs and tenuous, wind-blown falls like water threads trickled down
each side of the lofty rocks. The water was so deep that poles did not
touch bottom, and there was not the width of a foot-hold between water
and wall for camping ground. Flags were unfurled from the prows of the
boats to warn marauding Indians on the height above that the _voyageurs_
were white men, not enemies. Darkness fell on the canon with the great
hushed silence of the mountains; and still the boats must go on and on in
the darkness, for there was no anchorage. Finally, above a small island
in the middle of the river, was found a tiny camping ground with
pine-drift enough for fire-wood. Here they landed in the pitchy dark.
They had entered the Gates of the Rockies on the 19th of July. In the
morning bighorn and mountain goat were seen scrambling along the ledges
above the water. On the 25th the Three Forks of the Missouri were
reached. Here the Indian woman, Sacajawea, recognized the ground and
practically became the guide of the party, advising the two explorers to
follow the south fork or the Jefferson, as that was the stream which her
tr