The camp was pitched below the junction of the two forks, and an earnest consultation held as to which of the two channels should now be followed. The one flowing from the north was narrower but deeper than that from the south, and its waters were of the brown, turbid character which had already earned for the Missouri its name of the Mud River. Surely this northern branch must be the true Missouri! So urged all the members of the expedition, except the two leaders, who, judging more scientifically than their men, were of opinion that, though broader, the southerly branch, with its clear and transparent current, was more likely to have come from the rocky home assigned by all the natives to the great tributary under survey. Illustration: VIEW IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. The men, though unconvinced of the justice of their superiors’ opinion, yielded at once; and after a cursory examination of the northern branch, it was resolved to follow the more southerly. The natives of every district traversed, and the traders who had visited the western coast, had agreed in describing some very magnificent falls formed by the Missouri at no very great distance from its source. The finding of these falls would therefore be the final proof that the river was the true Missouri, and Captain Lewis now hurried forward with a few men, in the hope of solving all doubt before the main body started from the junction. A march of a couple of days brought the pioneers to a lofty ridge, from which they had their first view of the Rocky Mountains――that grand continuation of the Cordilleras of Mexico, which forms a kind of backbone to North America, and is the common ancestral home of the rivers of the far West, and of many of those whose last resting-places are in the extreme North or the Gulf of Mexico. Twelve miles beyond the ridge, a short halt was made, on account of the illness of Captain Lewis, and on the ensuing day, June 13, as the party were leisurely proceeding on their way in a southerly direction, the leader heard a sound which made him forget his weakness, in the hope that the Falls were now within a short distance.