giving an account of the Nez Percés in their search for the Book. His account of meeting them in General Clark's office, and of the object of their errand, created a tremendous sensation.
Religious committees called upon General Clark, letters were written, and to one and all he said, "That was the sole object of their journey,—to obtain the white man's Book of Heaven."
The call rang like a trumpet summons through the churches. The next year, 1834, the Methodists sent Jason Lee and three others to Oregon. Two years later followed Whitman and Spalding and their brides, the first white women to cross the Rocky Mountains.
"A famine threatens the Upper Missouri," was the news brought back by that steamer Yellowstone in 1832. "The buffaloes have disappeared!"
The herds, chased so relentlessly on the Missouri, were struggling through the Bitter Root Mountains, to appear in vast throngs on the plains of Idaho.
Even Europe read and commented on that wonderful first journey of a steamer up the Missouri, as later the world hailed the ascent of the Nile and the Yukon.
It was a great journey. Amazed Indians everywhere had watched the monster, puffing and snorting, with steam and whistles, and a continued roar of cannon for half an hour at every fur fort and every Indian village.
"The thunder canoe!" Redmen fell on the ground and cried to the Great Spirit. Some shot their dogs and horses as sacrifices.
At last, even the Blackfeet were reached. The British tried to woo them back to the Saskatchewan at Fort Edmonton, but eventually they tumbled over one another to trade with the Fire Boat that annually climbed the Missouri staircase.
