at a village of Mandan Indians situated at
the great bend of the Missouri River, in what is now known as North
Dakota. Deciding to winter here, they built huts and a stockade, calling
the camp Fort Mandan. The Mandans were used to white men, as the village
had been visited often by traders from both north and south.

Although the Indians gave them no trouble, the explorers suffered greatly
from cold and hunger, game being scarce and poor in the winter season.

When spring came the party, now numbering thirty-two, again took up the
westward journey. All before them was new country. They met few Indians
and found themselves in one of the finest hunting-grounds in the world.
Sage-fowl and prairie-fowl, ducks of all sorts, swans, and wild cranes
were plentiful, while huge, flapping geese nested in the tops of the
cottonwood-trees.

[Illustration: Buffalo Hunted by Indians.]

Big game, such as buffalo, elk, antelope, whitetail and blacktail deer,
and big-horned sheep, was also abundant. It happened more than once that
the party was detained for an hour or more while a great herd of buffalo
ploughed their way down the bank of a river in a huge column.

Many of the animals in this region were very tame, for they had not
learned to fear men. Yet among them the explorers found some dangerous
enemies. One was the grizzly bear, and another the rattlesnake. But the
greatest scourges of all were the tiny, buzzing mosquitoes, which beset
them in great swarms.

The second autumn was almost upon them when they arrived at the headwaters
of the Missouri, and their hardest task was yet to be accomplished. Before
them rose the mountains. These, they knew, must be crossed before they
could hope to find any waterway to the coast. The boats in which they had
come thus far, now being useless, were left behind, and horses were
procured from a band of wandering Indians.

Then they set out again on their journey, which presently became most
difficult. For nearly a month they painfully made their way through dense
forests, over steep mountains, and across raging torrents, whose icy water
chilled both man and beast. Sometimes storms of sleet and snow beat
pitilessly down upon them, and again they were almost overcome by
oppressive heat.

Game was so scarce that the men often went hungry, and were even driven to
kill some of their horses for food.

But brighter days were bound to come, and at last they reached a river
which flowed toward t