The mountains here assumed a formidable aspect, and the stream was too narrow, rapid, and rock-bound to admit of navigation.

The journal says of Captain Clark:-- "He soon began to perceive that the Indian accounts had not been exaggerated.

At the distance of a mile he passed a small creek (on the right), and the points of four mountains, which were rocky, and so high that it seemed almost impossible to cross them with horses.

The road lay over the sharp fragments of rocks which had fallen from the mountains, and were strewed in heaps for miles together; yet the horses, altogether unshod, travelled across them as fast as the men, without detaining them a moment.

They passed two bold running streams, and reached the entrance of a small river, where a few Indian families resided, who had not been previously acquainted with the arrival of the whites; the guide was behind, and the woods were so thick that we came upon them unobserved, till at a very short distance.