[1] PLATTE is French for low or flat. Long says it derives its name from the fact of being broad and shallow. [2] THE MISSOURI. So says Charlevoix. Marquette calls it Pekitanoui, on his map. It was not unfrequently called the Great River of the Osages. [3] YELLOWSTONE is English for Roche Jaune, the old French name. BLACK HILLS were Côte Noire. [4] THE COLUMBIA. Vancouver had ascended it (1792), one hundred miles from the sea. [5] CAPTAIN MERIWETHER LEWIS, afterwards governor of Louisiana, committed suicide in a fit of depression. [6] CAPTAIN WILLIAM CLARKE kept a journal of the expedition. Brother of General George Rogers Clarke. Lewis also kept a diary. THEY CROSS THE CONTINENT. On the 13th of June, while scouting in advance of his party, Captain Lewis saw, in the distance, a thin cloudlike mist rising up out of the plain. To him it was like the guiding column which led the Israelites in the desert. Not doubting that it was the Great Fall, which the Mandans had told him about, and of which he was in search, Captain Lewis hastened toward it. He soon heard it roar distinctly, and in a few hours more stood on the brink of the cataract itself. The Indians had told him truly. Not even the eagle's nest was wanting to make their description complete. He was the first white man who had ever stood there, and he calls it a sublime sight. Thirteen miles of cascades and rapids! At headlong speed the Missouri rushes down a rocky gorge, through which it has torn its way, now leaping over a precipice, now lost to sight in the depths of the cañon,[1] a thousand feet below the plain, or again, as with recovered breath, breaking away from these dark gulfs into the light of clay and bounding on again. No wonder the discoverer stood forgetful of all else but this wondrous work of nature! Much valuable time was lost in getting the boats and baggage round these falls. To pass them was impossible. It was necessary to build carriages on which the boats were dragged by hand a distance of eighteen miles, before they could be launched again. But after all this had been done the boats were found unsuited to the navigation of the river above them, and so new ones had to be hewed out of the trees growing on the banks, which could better withstand the buffeting of the rocks. In these the party again embarked, and on the 19th of July found themselves just entering a deep gorge of the mountains, five miles long, through which the river wound its way between walls of rock that rose a thousand feet above their heads. They named this awful cañon the Gate of the Rocky Mountains.