358 The Winning of the West 



All these larger foes paled into insignificance 

 compared with the mosquitoes. There are very 

 few places on earth where these pests are so for- 

 midable as in the bottom lands of the Missouri, and 

 for weeks and even months they made the lives of 

 our explorers a torture. No other danger, whether 

 from hunger or cold, Indians or wild beasts, was so 

 dreaded by the explorers as these tiny scourges. 



In the plains country the life of the explorers was 

 very pleasant save only for the mosquitoes and the 

 incessant clouds of driving sand along the river 

 bottoms. On their journey west through these 

 true happy hunting grounds they did not meet with 

 any Indians, and their encounters with the bears 

 were only just sufficiently dangerous to add excite- 

 ment to their life. Once or twice they were in peril 

 from cloudbursts, and they were lamed by the cac- 

 tus spines on the prairie, and by the stones and sand 

 of the river bed while dragging the boats against 

 the current; but all these trials, labors, and risks 

 were only enough to give zest to their exploration 

 of the unknown land. At the Great Falls of the 

 Missouri they halted, and were enraptured with their 

 beauty and majesty; and here, as everywhere, they 

 found the game so abundant that they lived in plenty. 

 As they journeyed up-stream through the bright 

 summer weather, though they worked hard, it was 

 work of a kind which was but a long holiday. At 

 nightfall they camped by the boats on the river bank. 

 Each day some of the party spent in hunting, either 

 along the river bottoms through the groves of cot- 



