and the _Journal_
which he had spread on the table. "That's what the explorers thought
when they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but there
were no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got was
deer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and did
some tanning and 'jurking.' Clark says they took this chance to compare
their 'instrimunts,' and also they 'suned their powder and wollen
articles.'

"Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had a
fat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the party
was in 'fine Sperrits.'"

"Oh, so would I be in fine 'sperrits' if I could kill a deer or so,"
grumbled Jesse. "Now look at us!"

"Well," went on Rob, "look at us, then. See here, what Clark says about
it:

"'The Countrey on each Side the river is fine, interspursed with
Praries, on which immence herds of Deer is seen. On the banks of
the river we observe number of Deer watering and feeding on the
young willow, Several killed to-day.... The Praries come within a
Short distance of the river on each Side, which contains in
addition to Plumbs Raspberries &c, and quantities of wild apples,
great numb{rs} of Deer are seen feeding in the young willows and
Earbarge on the Banks and on the Sand bars in the river.'"

"I didn't know that deer liked willow leaves," said John.

"I didn't, either, but here it is. And that was June 26th, when the
grass was up. I've even known some naturalists to say that deer don't
eat grass. We know they do.

"But what we want to get here is the idea that now the expedition was
just coming out of the hills and woods into the edge of the Prairies.
Across these Prairies and the Plains came big river valleys that led out
West toward the Rockies. If all that had been hills and timber, no road
ever would have got through. It was the big waterways that made the
roads into all the wilderness; we certainly learned that up in the Far
North, didn't we?

"So here was their crossroads of the waters, at old Independence, which
now is Kansas City. Not much here, but a natural place for the Gate to
the West.

"Clark had a good real-estate eye. He says:

"'The Countrey about the mouth of this river is verry fine on each
Side as well as north of the Missourie. A high Clift on the upper
Side of the Kanses 1/2 a mile up, below the Kanses the hills is
about 1-1/2 Miles from