strictest integrity was observed. An Indian is as ready as any one to
recognize genuineness. Before springtime, the Mandans and Minnetarees
knew that they had found friends.

In March the men began boat-building, preparatory to resuming their
journey. The batteau was too cumbrous for use toward the head waters of
the Missouri, and it was to be sent back to St. Louis. To take its
place, canoes were fashioned from green cottonwood planks. Cottonwood
lumber is full of whims and caprices,--bending, twisting, cracking like
brown paper, so as to be wholly unfit for ordinary carpentry; but there
was no other material available. Six canoes were made to hang together
somehow; and in these ramshackle structures, together with the two
periogues, the party covered more than a thousand miles of the roughest
water of the Missouri. Annoyance was to be expected. The boats were
continually splitting, opening at the seams, filling, and swamping, so
that much time was lost in stopping to make repairs and to dry the
water-soaked cargoes. This was merely an inconvenience, not an
obstacle.

CHAPTER VI

TO THE FALLS OF THE MISSOURI

On the afternoon of April 7, 1805, winter quarters were abandoned. Of
the original forty-five men two had been lost; but three recruits had
been gained,--Chaboneau, his squaw Sacajawea, and their infant son,
born in February. From Fort Mandan fourteen of the men returned to St.
Louis in the barge, carrying documents, collections, and trophies,
while thirty-two went onward, to be separated from their kind for
almost eighteen months. On this day Captain Lewis wrote in his
journal:--

"This little fleet altho' not quite so rispectable as those of Columbus
or Capt. Cook, were still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those
deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs; and I dare say with
quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation. We were now
about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on
which the foot of civilized man had never trodden; the good or evil it
had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these
little vessells contained every article by which we were to expect to
subsist or defend ourselves. However as the state of mind in which we
are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is
suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented
itself to me was a most pleasing one, entertaining as I do the most
c