The explorers judged that the cold was somewhat unusual for that locality, inasmuch as the cottonwood trees lost their leaves by the frost, showing that vegetation, generally well suited to the temperature of its country, or habitat, had been caught by an unusual nip of the frost.
The explorers noticed that the air of those highlands was so pure and clear that objects appeared to be much nearer than they really were.
A man who was sent out to explore the country attempted to reach a ridge (now known as the Little Rocky Mountains), apparently about fifteen miles from the river. He travelled about ten miles, but finding himself not halfway to the object of his search, he returned without reaching it.
The party was now just westward of the site of the present town of Carroll, Montana, on the Missouri. Their journal says:--"The low grounds are narrow and without timber; the country is high and broken; a large portion of black rock and brown sandy rock appears in the face of the hills, the tops of which are covered with scattered pine, spruce, and dwarf cedar; the soil is generally poor, sandy near the tops of the hills, and nowhere producing much grass, the low grounds being covered with little else than the hyssop, or southernwood, and the pulpy-leaved thorn.
Game is more scarce, particularly beaver, of which we have seen but few for several days, and the abundance or scarcity of which seems to depend on the greater or less quantity of timber.
At twenty-four and one-half miles we reached a point of woodland on the south, where we observed that the trees had no leaves, and camped for the night."
The "hyssop, or southernwood," the reader now knows to be the wild sage, or sage-brush. The "pulpy-leaved thorn" mentioned in the journal is the greasewood; and both of these shrubs flourish in the poverty-stricken, sandy, alkaline soil of the far West and Northwest. The woody fibre of these furnished the only fuel available for early overland emigrants to the Pacific.
The character of this country now changed considerably as the explorers turned to the northward, in their crooked course, with the river.
On the twenty-fifth of May the journal records this:--"The country on each side is high, broken, and rocky; the rock being either a soft brown sandstone, covered with a thin stratum of limestone, or else a hard, black, rugged granite, both usually in horizontal strata, and the sand-rock overlaying the other.
Salts and quartz, as well as some coal and pumice-stone, still appear.
The bars of the river are composed principally of gravel; the river low grounds are narrow, and afford scarcely any timber; nor is there much pine on the hills. The buffalo have now become scarce; we saw a polecat [skunk] this evening, which was the first for several days; in the course of the day we also saw several herds of the bighorned animals among the steep cliffs on the north, and killed several of them."
The bighorned animals, the first of which were killed here, were sometimes called "Rocky Mountain sheep." But sheep they were not, bearing hair and not wool. As we have said, they are now more commonly known as bighorns.
The patience of the explorers was rewarded, on Sunday, May 26, 1806, by their first view of the Rocky Mountains. Here is the journal's record on that date:--"It was here [Cow Creek, Mont.] that, after ascending the highest summit of the hills on the north side of the river, Captain Lewis first caught a distant view of the Rock mountains--the object of all our hopes, and the reward of all our ambition. On both sides of the river, and at no great distance from it, the mountains followed its course.
Above these at the distance of fifty miles from us, an irregular range of mountains spread from west to northwest from his position.
To the north of these, a few elevated points, the most remarkable of which bore N. 65'0 W., appeared above the horizon; and as the sun shone on the snows of their summits, he obtained a clear and satisfactory view of those mountains which close on the Missouri the passage to the Pacific."
As they continued to ascend the Missouri they found themselves confronted by many considerable rapids which sometimes delayed their progress.
They also set forth this observation: "The only animals we have observed are the elk, the bighorn, and the hare common to this country."
Wayfarers across the plains now call this hare the jack-rabbit. The river soon became very rapid with a marked descent, indicating their nearness to its mountain sources. The journal says:--"Its general width is about two hundred yards; the shoals are more frequent, and the rocky points at the mouths of the gullies more troublesome to pass.
Great quantities of stone lie in the river and on its bank, and seem to have fallen down as the rain washed away the clay and sand in which they were imbedded. The water is bordered by high, rugged bluffs, composed of irregular but horizontal strata of yellow and brown or black clay, brown and yellowish-white sand, soft yellowish-white sandstone, and hard dark brown freestone; also, large round kidney-formed irregular separate masses of a hard black ironstone, imbedded in the clay and sand; some coal or carbonated wood also makes its appearance in the cliffs, as do its usual attendants, the pumice-stone and burnt earth. The salts and quartz are less abundant, and, generally speaking, the country is, if possible, more rugged and barren than that we passed yesterday; the only growth of the hills being a few pine, spruce, and dwarf cedar, interspersed with an occasional contrast, once in the course of some miles, of several acres of level ground, which supply a scanty subsistence for a few little cottonwoods."
But, a few days later, the party passed out of this inhospitable region, and, after passing a stream which they named Thompson's (now Birch) Creek, after one of their men, they were glad to make this entry in their diary: