a passport whenever he wanted it, though they exacted security that he would not leave without permission. Another man, whose name was soon to be written for all time upon the face of this particular region, was at this moment preparing for the first of two important undertakings. [Illustration: A Rocky Mountain Torrent. Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey.] The uncertainty of the sources of the Mississippi and of the northern boundary of Louisiana impelled the astute Jefferson to arrange for other explorations in that quarter before the return of Lewis and Clark. For this work a young, brave, and capable officer, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike, was chosen.[68] He proceeded to St. Louis, and in August, 1805, with a keel boat seventy feet long, and a crew of one sergeant, two corporals, and seventeen privates, provisioned for four months, started to explore the Father of Waters to its uppermost rill. The Amerinds of this region had a great dread of the Americans, considering them quarrelsome and warlike, hence they would often go out of the way to avoid a meeting. Yet Pike was generally well received and one influential chief gave him a special peace pipe to show to the Sioux above as a sort of passport. It was a request to have him treated with friendship and respect. At one of the villages this friendship and respect were indicated by a salute from the guns of a party on shore. The guns were loaded with ball and, inasmuch as their owners were drunk, they tried to see how near the boat they could strike without actually hitting it. Notwithstanding their undesirable condition, Pike presented them later with several gallons of rum, an action which seems hardly pardonable in a government officer, yet this issuing to the natives of intoxicants was common among all officers, traders, and all managers of fur companies. They knew its diabolical effect, as well as its debasing and generally demoralising quality, yet they all did it. Of course the ordinary fur trader desired to intoxicate the natives in order to overreach them, and traded whiskey, or rather alcohol and water, for their goods because in this way he made a profit of several hundred per cent. The great fur companies each used it in their trade because the others did; but with the officers of the United States Army there was no excuse for employing this means of gaining the Amerind favour.