History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean : performed during the years 1804-5-6 by order of the government of the United States; Volume 1

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262 Lewit; and ClaJ•f.:e's Expeditwn The hunters who had been sent out now returned loaded with buffaloc meat, and captain Lewis encamped for the nigbt under a tree near the falls. The men were again de­spatched to hunt for food against the arrival of the par­ty, and captain Lewis walked down the river to discover if possible some place where the canoes might be safely drawn on shore, in order to he transpol'ted beyond the falls. Ife returned however without discovering any such spot, the 1·iver for three miles below being one continu~d succession of rapids and cascades, m·et·hung with perpendicular bluffs from one huudr·ed and fifty to two hundred feet high; in short, it seems to have worn itself a channd thJ•ough the solid rock. In the afternoon they caught in the fal1s some of both kinds of the white fish, and half a dozen trout fl'om sixteen to twenty-three inches long, precisely resembling in form and the position of its fins the mountain or speckled trout of the United States, except that the specks of the for ­mer are of a deep black, while those of the latter are of a red or gold colour: they h.avc long shal'p teeth on the palate and tongue, and generally a small speck of J•ed on each side behind the front ventral fins; the flesh is of' a I>ale yellowish red, or when in good order or a rosc-colout·e<l red. Friday 1-'1. rrhis morning one of the men was sent t.o captain Clarke with an account of the discovery of the falls, and afte1· employing the rest in preserving the meat which had been killed ycstc1·day, cai>tain Lewis procec(\cd to ex­amine the rapids above. From the falls he directed his course southwest up the riv<'r: after I>assing one continued t·apid, and three small cascades, each three or four feet high, he rcathc(l at tlte distance of five miles a second fall. The river is about four hundred yards wide, and fo1· the distanee of tlwee hund1·cd throws itself over to 1he depth of nineteen fet>t, aml so irregularly that ht> gave it the name or the Crooked falls. From the southern shore it extends ob­liquely upwat·ds about one hund1·ed and fifty yat•ds, and then forms an acute angle downwards nearly to tbe commence·