354 The Winning of the West 



with an intelligent Indian wife, whose baby was but 

 a few weeks old. 



From this point onward, when they began to 

 travel west instead of north, the explorers were in 

 a country where no white man had ever trod. It 

 was not the first time the continent had been crossed. 

 The Spaniards had crossed and recrossed it, for two 

 centuries, further south. In British America Mac- 

 kenzie had already penetrated to the Pacific, while 

 Hearne had made a far more noteworthy and diffi- 

 cult trip than Mackenzie, when he wandered over 

 the terrible desolation of the Barren Grounds, which 

 lie under the Arctic Circle. But no man had ever 

 crossed or explored that part of the continent which 

 the United States had just acquired ; a part far bet- 

 ter fitted to be the home of our stock than the regions 

 to the north or south. It was the explorations of 

 Lewis and Clark, and not those of Mackenzie on the 

 north or of the Spaniards in the south which were 

 to bear fruit, because they pointed the way to the 

 tens of thousands of settlers who were to come after 

 them, and who were to build thriving common- 

 wealths in the lonely wilderness which they had 

 traversed. 



From the Little Missouri on to the head of the 

 Missouri proper the explorers passed through a re- 

 gion where they saw few traces of Indians. It lit- 

 erally swarmed with game, for it was one of the 

 finest hunting grounds in all the world. 3 There 



3 It so continued for three-quarters of a century. Until 

 after 1880 the region around the Little Missouri was essen- 



