Part Two Chapter 8 Trail's End

Where lately had been gloom and despair there now reigned joy and confidence. With the great mountains behind them, and this new, pleasant and gentle land all around them, the spirits of the men rose buoyantly.

They could float easily down the strong current of the great Snake River, laboring but little, if at all. They made long hours every day, and by the middle of autumn they saw ahead of them a yet grander flood than that of the noble river which was bearing them.

At last they had found the Columbia! They had found what Mackenzie never found, what Fraser was not to find--that great river, now to be taken over with every right of double discovery by these messengers of the young republic. How swelled their hearts, when at last they knew this truth, unescapable, incontrovertible! It was theirs. They had won!

The men had grown reckless now. Cruzatte, Labiche, Drouillard--all the adventurers--sang as they traveled, gayer and more gay from day to day.

Always the landscape had fascinating interest for them in its repeated changes. They were in a different world. No one had seen the mountains which they saw. The Rockies, the Bitter Roots--these they had passed; and now they must yet pass through another range, this time not by the toilsome process of foot or horse travel, but on the strong flood of the river. The Columbia had made a trail for them through the Cascades.