s the Great Divide. They set out
the next morning, and the explorers resumed their toilsome journey,
travelling generally in a northwesterly direction and looking for a pass
across the Bitter Root Mountains. Very soon, all indications of game
disappeared, and, September 14, they were forced to kill a colt, their
stock of animal food being exhausted. They pressed on, however, through
a savage wilderness, having frequent need to recur to horse-flesh. Here
is an entry under date of September 18, in the journal: "We melted some
snow, and supped on a little portable soup, a few canisters of which,
with about twenty pounds' weight of bear's oil, are our only remaining
means of subsistence. Our guns are scarcely of any service, for there is
no living creature in these mountains, except a few small pheasants,
a small species of gray squirrel, and a blue bird of the vulture kind,
about the size of a turtle-dove, or jay. Even these are difficult to
shoot."

"A bold running creek," up which Captain Clark passed on September 19,
was appropriately named by him "Hungry Creek," as at that place they had
nothing to eat. But, at about six miles' distance from the head of the
stream, "he fortunately found a horse, on which he breakfasted, and hung
the rest on a tree for the party in the rear." This was one of the wild
horses, strayed from Indian bands, which they found in the wilderness,
too wild to be caught and used, but not too wild to shoot and eat.
Later, on the same day, this entry is made in the journal:

"The road along the creek is a narrow rocky path near the borders
of very high precipices, from which a fall seems almost inevitable
destruction. One of our horses slipped and rolled over with his load
down the hillside, which was nearly perpendicular and strewed with large
irregular rocks, nearly one hundred yards, and did not stop till he fell
into the creek. We all expected he was killed, but to our astonishment,
on taking off his load he rose, seemed but little injured, and in twenty
minutes proceeded with his load. Having no other provision, we took some
portable soup, our only refreshment during the day. This abstinence,
joined with fatigue, has a visible effect on our health. The men are
growing weak and losing their flesh very fast; several are afflicted
with dysentery, and eruptions of the skin are very common."

Next day, the party descended the last of the Bitter Root range and
reached level country. They were at las