f hard travel with a 'Descharge of the Bow piece,'
just because it's the Fourth of June. We're hitting things off in great
style now, and I'm beginning to have more confidence in gasoline."

"What made you want to get to this place, Uncle Dick?" asked John, his
own mouth rather full of fried chicken.

"Because of the location--the mouth of the Sioux River, and at the lower
edge of the great Sioux nation.

"Lewis and Clark tried to get peace among all these river tribes. They
held a big council here, decorating a few more Otoes and Missouris, and
telling them to make peace with the Omahas and the Pawnee Loups. The
Sioux had not yet been found, though their hunting fires were seen all
through here, and Lewis was very anxious to have his interpreter,
Dorion, find some Sioux and bring them into council.

"It was at Captain Lewis's birthday party that the first and only
casualty of the trip ensued. You remember Sergeant Floyd--he spelled
worse than Clark, and Ordway worse than either--and his journal of some
twenty thousand words, which he had kept till now? Well, he danced hard
at the birthday party or at the Indian council, and got overheated,
after which he lay down on the damp sand and got chilled. It gave him
what the _Journal_ calls a 'Biliose Chorlick,' and on the second day he
died. He was buried on the bluffs below the town, at what still is
called Floyd's Bluff, on the river they named after him, with military
honors, and his grave long was known. His river still is known by his
name, and it runs right into the town of Sioux City. The river washed
the bank away under his grave, and in 1857 the remains were reburied,
back from the river. That spot was marked by a slab in 1895, and a
monument was put over it in May, 1901. I was a guest at the dedication
of that obelisk. It was erected under the supervision of General Hiram
Chittenden, the great engineer and great historian. It has a city park
all of its own, and a marvelous landscape it commands.

"Well, poor Floyd had no memorial in those rude days, beyond a 'seeder
post.' They did what they could and then they 'set out under a gentle
Breeze and proceeded on.'"

"Well, but Dorion knew this country, then?" John began again, after a
time.

"Yes," Rob was first to answer, "and that's what puzzles me--how they
got such exact knowledge of a wild region. I suppose it was because they
had no railroads and so had to know geography. _The Journal_ says that
the Sioux