The fleet consisted of three craft; the largest was a keel-boat, fifty-five feet long, drawing three feet of water, carrying a sail, and propelled by twenty-two oars, eleven on each side. It had a forecastle and a cabin guarded by breastworks to protect against Indian attacks. The other two were piroques. These were boats bound together side by side and floored over; one with seven oars, another with six oars, and both carried sails. Besides Lewis and Clark, the party consisted of three sergeants――Ordney, Pryor, and Lloyd――twenty-three privates, two interpreters, and a Negro servant. The interpreters were Charbonneau and his Indian wife, Sacajawea. The Negro, whose name was York, was Clark’s slave and body servant. Many heroes were discovered in that company before it had reached the waters of the Pacific. There is just one heroine, Charbonneau’s wife, Sacajawea, or the Bird Woman. By birth she belonged to the Shoshone tribe. When a little girl she had been taken prisoner in a war between the Minnetarees and Shoshones and sold to a traveling Frenchman, who was a roving hunter and guide. He brought her up as a slave and afterward married her. Sacajawea guided the expedition and acted as interpreter, all the while giving her baby tender and watchful care. She received no gift when the party disbanded, but to-day she lives in the grateful memory of the West as one of its real explorers and a true benefactress. In the city park in Portland there stands a statue in honor of this brave Indian matron. Illustration: A STATUE IN HONOR OF SACAJAWEA IN THE CITY PARK, PORTLAND, OREGON The romantic episode of the return of this woman guide to her own tribe was one of the strange incidents of the expedition. Over unknown trails the daring scouts went in the untracked wilderness. It is hard to realize the suffering they endured from hunger, sickness, and other dangers. Their advance along the upper Missouri is of particular interest here. One day Captain Lewis, who was traveling on foot in order to lighten the canoes, climbed a high cliff and there before his glad eyes lay the “Land of the Shining Mountains,” for such was the Indian name for the region which was afterward known as Montana. As they pressed on, the roaring of water sounded in the distance, and soon the great falls of the Missouri came into view. Here the river drops over four hundred feet in a ten-mile stretch. The map that Lewis and Clark made of this section is so accurate that in 1892, when William Van Orsdel resided temporarily in the town of Great Falls, it was reproduced in facsimile with the modern improvements added. It was near the falls that Sacajawea recognized the spot where she had been taken prisoner by the Minnetarees.