Looking closer into the history and geography of the spot where now run the busy streets of Nebraska's metropolis, lined with substantial business blocks and attractive residences, precisely as platted in that lonely summer of 1854, the conclusion is forced that it was not mere fortuitous chance that built a wonder city upon an empty ferry landing. The location was by nature destined to be a turning point on the great central transcontinental highway bridging the divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific. [Illustration WILLIAM. P. SNOWDEN, OMAHA'S FIRST WHITE SETTLER.] Lewis and Clark, who worked their way to Oregon up the Missouri Valley, were the first white men to leave a record of their visit. From their journal is taken the following extract noting their arrival and detention at the mouth of the Platte in July, 1804, whence they continued northward and passed over the ground now included in the city: "July 27.--Having completed the object of our stay, we set sail with a pleasant breeze for the northwest. The two horses swam over to the southern [western] shore, along which we went, passing by an island, at three and a half miles, formed by a pond, fed by springs; three miles further is a large sand island in the middle of the river, the land on the south [west] being high and covered with timber; that on the north [east] a prairie. At ten and a half miles from our encampment, we saw and examined a curious collection of graves or mounds, on the south [west] side of the river. Not far from a low piece of land and a pond, is a tract of about two hundred acres in extent, which is covered with mounds of different heights, shapes and sizes; some of sand, and some of both earth and sand; the largest being near the river. These mounds indicate the position of the ancient village of the Ottoes, before they retired to the protection of the Pawnees. After making fifteen miles, we camped on the south [east] on the bank of a high, handsome prairie, with lofty cottonwood in groves, near the river."[14] That the mounds referred to constituted the ancient Indian burial ground, remnants of which long remained in the lower part of the town as objects of curiosity to inquisitive observers, has been established to the satisfaction of historical critics, as also that the council held by Lewis and Clark with the Indians, from which Council Bluffs derives its name, took place in reality not on the Iowa side opposite Omaha but on the Nebraska side several miles farther up, in the vicinity of what is now Fort Calhoun.