"About three o'clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into deep affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens, whose valour and intelligence would have been now employed in avenging the wrongs of his country, and in emulating by land the splendid deeds which have honoured her arms on the ocean. It lost, too, to the nation the benefit of receiving from his own hand the narrative now offered them of his sufferings and successes, in endeavoring to extend for them the boundaries of science, and to present to their knowledge that vast and fertile country which their sons are destined to fill with arts, with science, with freedom and happiness."
It is perhaps no idle dream if Americans feel that the future holds in store a glorious destiny for our country in the affairs of the world, and that our flag will, throughout the unnumbered centuries, symbolize the highest and most generous elements of civilization. The Snake river basin is able to and will, in time, support a population of many millions of brave, prosperous and happy people. Whether or not they will felicitate us who now occupy a position on the very threshold of an unbounded future, for giving our silent consent to an historical perversion which will perpetuate the memory of the Snake Indians by attaching this name to one of the most valuable and powerful rivers in America, rather than the memory of the man who first visited its waters, is a question of some import and one which affords much food for refiection.
One of the most interesting features in connection with early exploration, discoveries and development of the mountain regions, and one which quite generally has been over looked by contemporaneous writers, are the many and important pre-historic roads. A definite knowledge of these winding trails, the parallel and deep worn furrows, many of which are yet to be seen, is obtained with the greatest difficulty. As an example the journals of Lewis and Clark contain the fol lowing notation in connection with the discovery of Lemhi pass:
"At the distance of four miles írom his camp he met a large plain Indian road which came into the cove from the north east, and wound along the foot of the mountain to the south west," etc.
When he had arrived in the Lemhi valley, Captain Clark in-
