Livingston is located at the bend where the Yellowstone, after running north from the Park for fifty miles, breaks from the mountains and begins its long easterly course to the Missouri through a more open valley. This was the point at which Captain Clark, temporarily separated from Lewis on their return journey from the mouth of the Columbia, first saw the upper Yellowstone. He had, of course, passed its mouth when proceeding westward by the Missouri the previous year. It was now his purpose to explore the whole length of such of the river as flowed between this point and the Missouri, making rendezvous with Lewis at some point below its mouth. Clark had come from the Three Forks of the Missouri with pack-train, but with the intention of building boats and taking to the river just as soon as trees large enough for their construction could be found. Searching every flat for suitable boat-timber, the party proceeded down the north bank of the river, probably pretty well along the route followed by General Gibbon seventy years later in the campaign against the Sioux which culminated to the Custer Massacre on the Little Big Horn. The previous fall, rapid by rapid, I had run the lower Columbia in the wake of Lewis and Clark. Now I was turning into the trail of the Pathfinders again, this time their home trail. One of the things that I had been anticipating above all others was the delight of following that trail to its end, which also had been its beginning--St. Louis. I knew that there was going to be something of Lewis and Clark for me in every mile of the twenty-five hundred--yes, and of many another who had followed in their path. I was not to be disappointed. I only hope I am not going to be boring in telling a little about it. I trust not too much so. Darn it, a man can't be expected to write about bootleggers, and "white mule" and home-brew and ultra-modern institutions all the time. Lewis and Clark and the other pioneers of the North-west have always meant a lot to me. I simply can't help mentioning them now and again--but I'll try and strike a balance in the long run. [Illustration: _By Haynes, St. Paul_ GATE OF THE MOUNTAINS, YELLOWSTONE RIVER]