A fur trader, Hugh McCracken, met Lewis and Clarke at this point, and we read, "That he set out on November 1st on his return to the British fort and factory on the Assiniboine River, about one hundred and fifty miles from this place. He took a letter from Captain Lewis to the North-West Company, enclosing a copy of the passport granted by the British Minister in the United States." This shows the uncertainty as to the boundary line, the leaders of the expedition having provided themselves with this permission in case of need. In dealing with the Mandans, Captain Lewis gave them presents, and "told them that they had heard of the British trader, Mr. Laroche, having attempted to distribute medals and flags among them; but that these emblems could not be received from any other than the American nation, without incurring the displeasure of their Great Father, 'the President. On December 1st the party was visited by a trader, Henderson, who came from the Hudson's Bay Company. He had been about eight days on his route in a direction nearly south, and brought with him tobacco, beads, and other merchandise to trade for furs, and a few guns which were to be exchanged for horses. On December 17th Hugh Harvey and two companions arrived at the camp, having come in six days from the British establishment on the Assiniboine, with a letter from Mr. Charles Chaboillez, one of the North-West Company, who, with much politeness, offered to render us any service in his power." With the expedition of Lewis and Clarke we have little more to do. It successfully crossed from the sources of the Missouri, over the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia, descended it to the mouth, and returned by nearly the same route, reaching the mouth of the Missouri in 1806. The expedition of Lewis and Clarke has become the most celebrated of the American transcontinental ventures. Its early presence at the mouth of the Columbia River gave strength to the claim of the United States for that region; it was virtually a taking possession of the whole country from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean; it had a picturesqueness and an interest that appealed to the national mind, and the melancholy death of Captain Lewis, who, in 1809, when the American Government refused to fulfil its engagements with him, blew out his brains, lends an impressiveness to what was really a great and successful undertaking. PIKE'S EXPEDITION.