River, and the Platte, all early routes of consequence, and, by far the greatest from every point of view, there was the Missouri.1

The water which has its source at the head of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri, on the Rocky Mountain dividing line between Montana and Idaho, reaches the Gulf of Mexico after a journey of forty-two hundred and twenty-one miles. The enormous extent of the Mississippi's drainage basin is illustrated by the fact that the water which passes through the great river's mouth to the sea comes from no fewer than twenty-eight states and the Indian territory. The Missouri-Mississippi reckoned as a continuous water route forms the longest river in the world. Its

1 The mouth of the Missouri was discovered by Marquette and Joliet in 1673. The river was entered about 1700 by the French, who ascended farther and farther, until Chittenden estimates that by the time St. Louis was founded in 1764 the river had been explored for a thousand miles. In 1804 Lewis and Clark had been preceded by white men almost up to the mouth of the Yellowstone.

2 Mr. George Cary Eggleston's story, "The Last of the Flat-boats," gives a suggestive popular sketch of the magnitude, political consequence, and peculiarities of this system.

tortuous way, its frequent changes of course, and its destructive floods have presented problems yet unsolved. The time may come when great reservoirs will gather the surplus waters of floods like those of the spring of 1903, but, in spite of the attempts of man, the Missouri remains as unfettered as when Marquette and Joliet shrank appalled from the seething torrent at its mouth. Historically the part of the Missouri has been of the first importance. "For fully a hundred years" (up to about 1875), says Chittenden, "the history of the Missouri River was the history of the country through which it flowed." The explorer, trapper and trader, priest and soldier, prospector, miner, and buffalo hunter, and the military forces of the United States1 swelled the number

1 As early as 1819, when the first steamboat entered the Missouri, arrangements were made, but not carried out, for the transportation of troops to the Yellowstone. In 1825 troops were carried in keel boats propelled by wheels turned by hand. After 1855 the steamboat played a large part in military operations along the Missouri and its tributaries. Of the various dramatic incidents of the steamboat days in the remote Northwest, one of the most stirring was the run of the Far West after the Custer massacre in

of travelers upon this great water way. The early nineteenth century brought a new and most important era in the coming of the steamboat.1 Another chapter was opened later in the transportation of troops; and still another a little later in the northwestern discoveries of gold. Taking the Missouri-Mississippi as

1876. Down the narrow and unknown Big Horn, down the dangerous Yellowstone and the Missouri, the Far West was driven with the speed of a railway train, bringing to Bismarck her load of wounded soldiers and the full reports of the battle-a thousand miles in fifty-four hours.

In 1877 General Miles's good fortune in finding a steamboat near the mouth of the Muscleshell (Musselshell) enabled him to gain sufficiently on Chief Joseph and the fleeing Nez Percés, who were nearing British soil, to overtake them within fifty miles of the boundary line.

1 A steamboat was built at Pittsburg as early as 1811 and descended to New Orleans.

2 In 1863 came the rich Alder Gulch discovery of gold placers on a branch of the Jefferson fork of the Missouri, and the following year the gold of Last Chance Gulch laid the foundation of the future capital of Montana, — Helena. The discoveries of mineral wealth which followed were the beginnings of Montana's prosperity, and one immediate effect was a vast increase in steamboat traffic. "Prior to 1864," says Chittenden, "there had been only six steamboat arrivals at Fort Benton. In 1866 and 1867 there were