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The scenery of the whole region is exceedingly beautiful. Cop per and iron are plentiful. Some coal, 'the portable climate of our civilization,' has been discovered. Agates, amethysts, and rubies are found, and I have seen a large collection of garnets, all picked up by a lady in her back yard.

The development of the next few years will be very rapid; and this little-known Territory will soon produce more of the precious metals than any State except California.

In all the social and material elements for a great and powerful Commonwealth, Montana is full of richness and of promise. Beautiful upon the mountains is this youngest and fairest of our national sisterhood, her arms heaped with shining gold, her hair dripping with morning dew.

Gold and silver, whether found in rock or in decomposed earth, work the miracles of our civilization. Palaces spring up in the wilderness, and cities among the mountain tops. The stream is imprisoned by the dam, and vexed with the wheel; fruitful farms are wrested from lonely valleys, and glowing treasures from rockribbed hills; newspapers and telegraphs bring in all the world for neighbors; the beaver must dive his quickest to avoid the plowing steamer; and buffalo and Indian run their fleetest to escape the gliding locomotive.

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LEWIS AND CLARK'S GREAT EXPEDITION. [1865.

CHAPTER XL.

THE great Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, was made by Pres ident Jefferson in 1803, for fifteen millions of dollars. It comprehended the present State of Louisiana, and the entire region west of the Mississippi, between the Spanish possessions on the south and British America on the north-more than half the present area of the United States.

Soon after this negotiation, in obedience to an act of Congress, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark, captains in the United States army, to explore the vast, unknown region which his wisdom and sagacity had added to the young republic. The prime purpose of the expedition was to ascertain the possibility of a road across the continent; it was unconsciously the pioneer movement for a Pacific railway. They started from the then little French village of St. Louis, laboriously ascending the Missouri to its sources in the Rocky Mountains; crossed the range by a difficult pass; and reaching the head of the Columbia, followed it to the ocean. It was a daring journey, full of adventure and romance, over the untrodden continent, through hundreds of savage nations. It was an epic of exploration-a modern Argonautic pursuit of the Golden Fleece of the future. The little band were scouts and spies of a grand army for the conquest of a hemisphere—the army of civilization and freedom.

Twenty years ago, Lewis and Clark's report, in two large octavos, was eagerly read wherever the English language was spoken. The venerable volumes were found upon farm-house tables and mantels throughout the United States. Now the work is out of print.

The adventurous explorers journeyed along rivers in boats

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EXPLORERS GIVEN UP AS DEAD.

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propelled by sails, oars and tow-lines; and upon the land, both on horseback and on foot. They were the first white men to see the Great Falls of the Missouri, and the Gates of the Rocky Mountains; and to descend the Columbia, past all its whirlpools and rapids, to the broad, inhospitable mouth.

After the absence of more than two years, they once more reached St. Louis. The inhabitants who had long given them up as dead, deceived, at first sight, by their clothing of skins

and swarthy faces, supposed them Indians. Going out, they made the distance from the mouth of the Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia, four thousand one hundred and thirty-four miles. They returned by a nearer route, shortening it to three thousand five hundred and seventy-five.

Clark was a native of Kentucky, whose familiarity with Indian warfare from early boyhood, especially fitted him for this expedition. He acted as the military director, while Lewis devoted himself chiefly to scientific investigations.

After their return, Clark was successively brigadier-general, governor of Missouri Territory and superintendent of Indian

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BUILD THEM A MONUMENT!

[1865.

affairs under President Monroe. He filled the last position with signal fidelity and success, until his death in St. Louis in 1838. The Indians uniformly named him 'Red Head.'

Lewis was a Virginian, who had been in the army, and afterward private secretary to President Jefferson. In 1809, serving as governor of Missouri Territory, he found that quiet life unendurable. At a wayside Tennessee inn, he died by his own hand, at the early age of thirty-five.

The patience and daring of these explorers, sent forth in obedience to the early national instinct which is now culminating in the trans-continental railway, excited the warm enthusiasm of their countrymen. Successive administrations recognized their services by retaining them in important public positions; and Congress made large grants of public land to each.

Simultaneously with the running of the first locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, some fitting monument to their memory, reared by the American Government or people, should receive its crowning stone.

Their report describes the Great Falls of Missouri, two thousand five hundred miles above St. Louis, within the present limits of Montana, as 'a sublime spectacle, which since the creation has been lavishing its magnificence upon a desert unknown to civilization.' Lewis found the river three hundred yards wide, among precipitous cliffs, with the water falling eighty feet. On the north side the current was broken by projecting rocks and its spray flew up in vast snowy columns luminous with rainbows.

The stream in this vicinity is really a series of descents. In thirteen miles of cascades and rapids, the total fall is three hundred and eighty feet. The upper cataract, forty feet high, extending across the river like a slightly-bent bow, is picturesque and beautiful. Among the rapids at its base are many little falls, of from one to five yards, while the banks on either side form a deep narrow gorge, one thousand feet below the general level of the bare plains. These tremendous walls of yellow sandstone give peculiar grandeur and impressiveness to the wild, rugged scene.

The lower or Great Falls are best seen from a projecting point of rock. The thunder of the falling torrent, vailed in snowy foam, the bold banks, the dazzling rainbows, and the immense

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'HELP YOURSELF TO THE MUSTARD.'

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volume of water, will make the spot a favorite one for tourists in all coming time.

With regret I left Montana, her green valleys glad with streams and flowers, her rugged mountains somber with pines and firs. On the way back toward Salt Lake, at some stage stations we were feasted on wild geese and mountain trout, more toothsome

nothing whatever upon the table except pork and mustard. 'Will you have some bacon?' queried the landlord. 'No,' replied the disgusted traveler; 'I never eat pork.' 'Then,' responded the complacent host, 'help yourself to the mustard!'

เ

We passed through Port Neuf canyon, thirty miles long, where the mail coach, bringing gold dust from Montana, has been twice robbed. The last time, it was crowded with passengers all armed