l at last, by a clump of dark
balsam trees, high up toward the white top of Jefferson, where a light
snow had fallen not long before, even in the summertime, they picked out
the dark rock from under which a tiny thread of water, icy cold and
sufficiently continuous to be called perennial, issued and began its way
to a definite and permanent channel.

Without any comment, each one of the party, almost unconsciously,
removed his hat. A feeling almost of awe fell upon them as they stood in
that wild, remote, silent and sheltered spot, unknown and unnoted of the
busy world, which now they knew was the very head spring of the greatest
waterway of all the world.

"'Shun!" barked Uncle Dick. The three boys fell into line, heels
together, in the position of the soldier, Billy following suit. Uncle
Dick drew from his pocket a tiny, folded flag, no more than four or five
inches in its longest dimension, and pinned it on a twig which he placed
upright at the side of the spring.

"Colors!" Sharply Uncle Dick's hand swept to his eyes, in the army
salute. And the hand of every one of the others followed. Then, with
swung hat, Rob led them with the Scouts' cheer.

"Let's look for the Culver plate now!" exclaimed Jesse, and scrambled on
hands and knees. Indeed, he did unearth the rusted fragments of what
might have been the original record plate, but small trace now remained
of any inscription. With some pride he next drew out from his shirt
front a plate which he himself had concealed thus long, brought for a
purpose of like sort to that of the rusted remnant they now had found.
But his Uncle Dick gently restrained him.

"No, better not, son," said he. "You and I have done very little. We
have discovered nothing at all, except one Indian arrowhead a hundred
miles north of here. To leave our names here now would only be egotism,
and that's not what we want to show. Reverence is what we want to show,
for this place that was here before Thomas Jefferson was born, and will
be here unchanged after the last President of the United States shall
have passed on.

"Let old Mount Jefferson have his own secret still for his own--see how
he wipes out all traces of human beings, steadily and surely!

"In all their great journey across, Meriwether Lewis did not once write
his name on rock or tree. Will Clark wrote his twice--once on Pompey's
Pillar, on the Yellowstone, and once on the rock far down in Nebraska,
as we noted when we passed nea