The mouth of this river is established as the dividing point between the upper and lower Missouri; and the earlier voyagers, in their toilsome ascent, before the introduction of steamboats, considered one-half of their labors accomplished when they reached this place.

The passing of the mouth of the Nebraska, therefore, was equivalent among boatmen to the crossing of the line among sailors, and was celebrated with like ceremonials of a rough and waggish nature, practiced upon the uninitiated; among which was the old nautical joke of shaving.

The river deities, however, like those of the sea, were to be propitiated by a bribe, and the infliction of these rude honors to be parried by a treat to the adepts.
At the mouth of the Nebraska new signs were met with of war parties which had recently been in the vicinity.

There was the frame of a skin canoe, in which the warriors had traversed the river.

At night, also, the lurid reflection of immense fires hung in the sky, showing the conflagration of great tracts of the prairies.