The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
Читать онлайн книгу.
be Judith.
“In the same way Lewis called this river, near whose mouth we now are standing, Maria’s River, after his cousin, Miss Maria Wood. Clark’s river, famous in military days, and now famous as the wheat belt of the Judith Basin, lost the possessive and is now plain Judith. That of Meriwether Lewis still has all the letters, but is spelled Marias River, without the possessive apostrophe. So these stand even to-day, the names of two Virginia girls, and no doubt will remain there while the water runs or the grass grows, as the Indians say.”
“But even now you’ve forgotten something, Uncle Dick,” interrupted John. “You said this was the Forks of the Road. How do you mean?”
“Yes. This later proved one of the great strategic points of the West. As you know, this was the head of steamboat navigation, and the outfitting point for the bull trains that supplied all the country west and south and north of us. No old post is more famous. But that is not all.
“I have reference now, really, not to Fort Benton, but to the mouth of the Marias River, below here. Now, see how nearly, even to-day, the Marias resembles the Missouri River. Suppose you were captain, Jess, and you had no map and nothing to go by, and you came to these two rivers and didn’t have any idea on earth which was the one coming closest to the Columbia, and had no idea where either of them headed — now, what would you do?”
“Huh!” answered Jesse, with no hesitation at all. “I know what I’d have done.”
“Yes? What, then?”
“Why, I’d have asked that Indian girl, Sacágawea, that’s what I’d have done. She knew all this country, you say.”
“By Jove! Not a bit bad, Jess, come to think of it. But look at your Journal. You’ll find that at precisely the first time they needed to ask her something they could not! The girl was very sick, from here to above the Great Falls. They thought she was going to die, and it’s a wonder she didn’t, when you read what all they gave her by way of medicines. She was out of her head part of the time. They never asked her a thing on the choice of these rivers!
“Well now, what did they do? They spent more than a week deciding, and it was time well spent. They sent out small parties up each fork a little way, and the men all thought the Marias, or right-hand fork, was the true Missouri. Then Clark was sent up the south fork, which was clearer than the other. He went thirty-five miles. If he had gone twenty miles farther, he’d have been at the Great Falls; and the Minnetaree Indians had told of those falls, and of an eagle’s nest there, though they said nothing about the river to the north. Chaboneau had never been here. His wife was nearly dead. No one could help.
“Lewis took a few men and went up the Marias for about sixty miles. They came back down the Marias, and decided on the left-hand fork, against the judgment of every man but Clark.
“His reasoning is good. The men all pointed out that the right-hand fork was roily, boiling, and rolling, exactly like the Missouri up which they had come, whereas the other fork was clear. But Lewis said that this showed that the Marias ran through plains country and did not lead close to the Rockies, from which the water would run clearer; and they did not want to skirt the mountains northerly, but to cross them, going west.
“Lewis had an old English map, made by a man named Arrowsmith, based on reports of a Hudson’s Bay trader named Fidler, who had gone a little south of the Saskatchewan and made some observations. Now look at your Journal, and see what Lewis thought of Mr. Fidler.
“The latter marked a detached peak at forty-five degrees latitude. Yet Lewis — who all this time has been setting down his own latitude and longitude from his frequent observations — makes the Marias as forty-seven degrees, twenty-four minutes, twelve and eight-tenths seconds. He says:
“‘The river must therefore turn much to the south between this and the rocky mountain to have permitted Mr. Fidler to have passed along the eastern border of these mountains as far south as nearly 45° without even seeing it.... Capt. Clark says its course is S. 29 W. and it still appeared to bear considerably to the W. of South.... I think therefore that we shall find that the Missouri enters the rocky mountains to the North of 45°. We did take the liberty of placing his discoveries or at least the Southern extremity of them about a degree farther North ... and I rather suspect that actual observations will take him at least one other degree further North. The general course of Marias river ... is 69° W. 59´.’
“Lewis also figured that Fidler in his map showed only small streams coming in from the west, ‘and the presumption is very strong that those little streams do not penetrate the Rocky Mountains to such distance as would afford rational grounds for a conjecture that they had their sources near any navigable branch of the Columbia.’ He was right in that — and he says those little creeks may run into a river the Indians called the Medicine River. Now that is the Sun River, which does come in at the Falls, but which Lewis had never seen!
“Again, the Minnetaree Indians had told him, in their long map-making talks at the Mandan winter quarters, that the river near the Falls was clear, as he now saw this stream. The Minnetarees told him the Missouri River interlocked with the Columbia. And as he was now straight west of the Minnetarees, he figured that when they went hunting to the head of the Missouri, as they had, they couldn’t have passed a river big as this south fork without mentioning it. And the Indians said that the Falls were a ‘little south of the sunset’ from the Mandans — and Lewis had his latitude to show he was still on that line and ought to hold to it.
“Lastly, he reasoned that so large a river must penetrate deeply into the Rockies — and that was what he wanted. He knew it could not rise in dry plains. So, relying on his Minnetarees and his horse sense, and not on Mr. Fidler, Lewis refused to go any farther north, because he could not figure out there a big river penetrating into the Rockies. He was absolutely right, as well as very shrewd and wise.
“Now, reasoning at first shot, the voyageurs would have gone up the Marias. Cruzatte especially, their best riverman, was certain the Marias was the true Missouri. They would then maybe have met the Blackfeet and would never have crossed the Rockies; which would have meant failure, if not death; whereas this cold-headed, careful young man, Meriwether Lewis, by a chain of exact reasoning on actual data, went against the judgment of the entire party and chose the left-hand fork, which we know is the true Missouri; and which we’ll find hard enough to follow to its head, even to-day.
“Think over that, boys. Do you begin to see what a man must be, to be a leader? We have had plenty of Army men in Western exploration since then, plenty of engineers who could spell. But in all the records you’ll not find one example of responsibility handled as quietly and decisively as that. You must remember the pressure he was under. It would have been so easy to take the united conviction of all these old, grizzled, experienced voyageurs and hunters.
“Well, if Clark and he argued over it, at least that is not known. But all the men took the decision of the two leaders without a whimper. I think the personnel of that party must have been extraordinary. And their leaders proved their judgment later.
“Now, with poor Sacágawea expected to die, and with all the responsibility on their shoulders, our captains acted as though they had no doubts. If they did have, Lewis solved it all when he ascended the Marias on his way home next year.
“Now the water was getting swift. They knew nothing of what was ahead, but their load was heavy. So now they hid their biggest boat in the willows on an island, at the mouth of the Marias, and dug a cache for a great deal of their outfit — axes, ammunition, casks of provisions, and much superfluous stuff. They dug this bottle shaped, as the old fur traders did, lined it with boughs and grass and hides, filled it in and put back the cap sod — all the dirt had been piled on skins, so as not to show. Stores would keep for years when buried carefully in this way.
“So now, lighter of load, but still game — with Cruzatte playing the fiddle for the men to dance of evenings — on June 12th they ‘set out and proceeded on,’ leaving this great and historical fork of the water road on the morning of June 12th, with Sacágawea so very sick that the captains took tender care of her all the trip, though they speak