I overslept the next morning and so did not carry out my over-night resolution of pulling across to the ranch and thanking the "Good-Bye" girl. Or rather, I did start and then changed my mind. She was on the upper verandah recuperating from a shampoo. Scarlet kimono and bobbed hair! No, not with a river to escape by. Stifling my _au revoir_ impulse I decided to leave well enough alone by taking that "Good-bye" literally. Abandoning the boat to the will of the current I departed via the lines of white under the sullen cliff. At the end of a couple of hours' run in a slackening current I landed in an eddy above Pompey's Pillar, quite the most outstanding landmark on the Yellowstone. Clark describes how he halted "to examine a very remarkable rock situated in an extensive bottom on the right, about two hundred and fifty paces from the shore. It is nearly four hundred paces in circumference, two hundred feet high and accessible from the north-east, the other sides being a perpendicular cliff of a light-coloured, gritty rock.... The Indians have carved the figures of animals and other objects on the sides of the rock, and on the top are raised two piles of stones." Captain Clark, after writing down a careful description of the country on all sides, marked his name and the date on the rock and went on his way. This was the first point at which I had opportunity to make accurate comparison of the respective stages of water encountered by Clark and myself. I found the base of the rock less than a hundred paces from the river, which indicated--as the channel seems to have been well fixed here--that I was enjoying three or four feet more water than did my illustrious predecessor. This would seem to be just about accounted for by the fact that I was voyaging three weeks earlier in the season than he--that much nearer the high water of early June, at which time it was apparent that the river backed up right to the cliff.