For six weeks every one in St. Louis connected with the expedition was busily occupied in getting supplies together and in shipping several hundred tons of foodstuffs, clothing, camp equipage, and ammunition on steamboats which were going up the Missouri on the Spring high water to Fort Benton, Montana, the outfitting point for the newly discovered gold district in that Territory. These goods were consigned to Fort Union, the chief trading post of the American Fur Company, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, where a depot was to be established so as to have supplies ready for the troops when they should reach that point, as it was planned they should do, after marching overland from the Missouri to the Yellowstone. Many hundreds of tons more were loaded on the eight steamers which General Sully had chartered for the exclusive use of his army, and on them were carried also a great quantity of building materials for use in the two forts which were to be erected, one on the upper Missouri and one on the Yellowstone. Few troops were to start with the fleet from St. Louis, because General Sully's men were either scattered in the several forts and cantonments along the river in Dakota where they had spent the Winter, or were to meet the boats at the village of Sioux City, Iowa; while a large column from General Sibley's command was marching from Minnesota straight across the high prairies of Dakota to join the rest of the expedition at Bois Cache Creek, nearly opposite the mouth of the Moreau River. CHAPTER VII UP THE MISSOURI