NARRATIVE OF 1853. 113 
for the city of Washington, when early that day Lieutenant Grover arrived, having triumph- 
antly carried out his enterprise of passing over all the ranges in the winter, from the waters 
of the Missouri to the lower Columbia. The following is the substance of his operations from 
the date of my parting from him at Fort Benton to our meeting to-day. 
LIEUTENANT GROVER’S EXPLORATIONS FROM THE MISSOURI TO THE LOWER COLUMBIA. 
The Great Falls of the Missouri are situated about 75 miles by land above the fort. 
There are five principal cascades ; the first of twenty-five feet fall, about three miles below 
the mouth of Sun river; the second nearly three miles below this, of five feet eleven inches; 
and immediately below it the third. Here, between high banks, a ledge, nearly as straight as 
if formed by art, runs obliquely across the river and over it the waters fall forty-two feet in 
one continuous sheet of four hundred and seventy yards in width. Half a mile below this is 
the fourth, a small, irregular cascade of about twelve feet descent. The stream then hurries 
on, lashed and churned by numerous rapids, about five miles further, when it precipitates 
itself over a precipice seventy-six feet high. "The banks are high and abrupt on both sides, 
with deep ravines extending into the prairie for one or two miles both above and below it. 
Below the falls there is a continuation of rapids, which become less and less frequent, to the 
mouth of Highwood creek. Steep banks about two hundred feet high crowd closely upon the 
river, and on the north side are so cut up by precipitous ravines that it is almost impossible to 
keep near it. But from this to Fort Benton the river bends are longer and there are patches 
of bottom lands. The soil is good and grass plentiful both on the bottoms and the adjacent 
high prairies. There is a good supply of cottonwood, and on the Highwood mountains pine 
timber is easy of access, this being the place where the Fur Company get their building 
materials. Below the mouth of the Highwood there are no rapids of any consequence to Fort 
Benton, and the river and its banks much resemble that portion of the stream below the fort. 
The Missouri, from the Great Falls to the mouth of Milk river, was surveyed by Lieutenant 
Grover, travelling in a flat-boat. For many miles below the falls the river flows at the bottom 
of a сайоп, with very abrupt and bare walls, between which it winds, leaving at each detour 
a small rich interval in the bend covered with luxuriant grass and sometimes skirted by a few 
small cottonwood trees. 
The cliffs are from one hundred to one hundred and sixty feet high. 
Passing through the bluffs of the Bear's Paw range, the scenery assumed an entirely new 
phase. "The bluffs were more abrupt and crowded on the river; colonnades and detached 
pillars of partially cemented sand, capped by huge globes of light brownish sandstone, towered 
up from their steep sides to the height of a hundred feet or more above the water. The action 
of the weather upon the bluffs in the background has worn them into a thousand grotesque 
forms, while lower down their faces seams of róck from three to six feet thick, with nearly a 
vertical dip, beaten and cracked by the weather, and still protruding for six or eight feet 
above the softer materials, run up the steep faces and projecting shoulders of the cliffs, looking 
exactly like stone walls. At a little distance the resemblance to old ruins is striking. 
Among these is Citadel Rock, a vertical shaft of volcanic (?) formation, rising about two 
hundred feet above the water's edge, and standing upon a base of about forty feet square. By 
climbing up a goat-path he succeeded in getting on top of one of the globes that rested on a 
short pillar, and in passing from that to some of the others near it. All were nearly of the 
