An Upper Missouri Trip 
!. Embarking at Old Fort Benton 
By DeCOST SMITH 
S INCE the days of Pierre Gaultier de Va- 
rennes, Sieur de la Verendrye, who took the 
upper Missouri trip in 17+2-3, many others, 
for profit or pleasure, have done likewise. Lewis 
and Clark, in 1805, and Maximilian, Prince of 
Wied, with Bodmer, the artist, in 1833, were 
some of the illustrious navigators of these waters 
before the steamboat took possession of the upper 
river, for in the early thirties Fort Union, at 
the mouth of the Yellowstone, was the head of 
steam navigation. Catlin and Audubon both 
got that far, the former in 1832, as passenger 
on the first steamboat to reach Union. 
Beyond this point travel was then carried on 
by means of “bull boats," skiffs, mackinaw and 
keel boats, towed up stream by a gang of men 
d la cordelle, though later on the entire distance 
to Fort Benton was covered, more or less regu¬ 
larly, by steamboats, when the depth of water 
permitted. This traffic was heavy for a time, but 
when the railroads reached western Montana, 
steamboating on the upper Missouri became a 
thing of the past, and as a consequence condi¬ 
tions have once more reverted to very much what 
they were in the beginning; so that now anyone 
wishing to float down stream from Benton must 
adopt primitive methods and depend upon his 
own judgment and energy to get him safely 
through. 
“But,” you ask, “is the trip worth taking?" 
I will answer “No” and “Yes,” depending on 
your motive for taking it, your temperament, 
your capacity for enjoying the strange and ec¬ 
centric in nature, and above all, your ability to 
bear without flinching what to many would prove 
almost intolerable monotony; for in general char¬ 
acter the river is the same for hundreds of miles, 
flowing mostly through leaden gray hills, each 
new bend a repetition of the last, though relieved 
here and there by stretches of crag and cliff, 
mountains and bad lands, weird, grotesque, re- 
pellant—or beautiful, fascinating, fairy-like—ac¬ 
cording to the weather conditions or the mood 
of the observer. 
It is a wild country. The natural scenery to¬ 
day is practically the same as it always has been, 
though almost every available bottom has some 
kind of a ranch or cabin, many of them deserted, 
how'ever, and the stock and sheepmen have taken 
the range. Barb wire fences run up and down 
the faces of apparently inaccessible cliffs, string¬ 
ing their horrid strands now over pine-covered 
hills miles from the river, now through thickets 
o.f wdlows and cottonwoods at the waters edge, 
and cattle and horses are almost everywhere; 
but, paradoxical as it seems, the wildness is there 
too, a wildness, fortunately, that can never be 
entirely tamed. 
What little game remains has survived purely 
by virtue of its own w'its and the roughness of 
the country, but it is going fast. We frequently 
heard it said of the white tail deer, the least 
scarce of all the big game now left, “it takes a 
good man to get ’em out of the willows,” and 
after sampling the willow's and rose bushes, and 
observing the tactics of these deer, I do not 
hesitate to say this is quite true; in fact, I would 
not advise anyone to go there merely to kill game. 
Any good hunter can get deer in Maine 01 New' 
York with one-tenth the outlay of time, money 
and patience. And yet there are probably still 
to be found, on this part of the Missouri, all 
the species of game animals that existed there in 
the days of Verendrye, with the exception of 
the buffalo and the elk. Though but pitiful sur¬ 
vivors of their former numbers, there are a few 
mountain sheep, grizzly bears, antelope, a scat¬ 
tering of black tail deer, and a fair number of 
white tails. Beaver are comparatively plentiful 
in certain parts, and of course there are wolves, 
coyotes and the smaller animals, and birds. Al¬ 
together we saw sign of perhaps two or three 
bears in nearly 5°° miles of river travel and 
about 200 miles of hunting on foot, for we often 
scoured the country five or six miles back into 
the “breaks.” It must be remembered also that 
a single meat-eating silvertip follow'ing the muddy 
shores of the river will make a good many miles 
of tracks which may remain visible for months. 
We saw neither bears, sheep nor antelope, but we 
did manage to get a reasonable amount of meat, 
deer of both species, ducks, prairie chicken and 
fish, and w'e saw many interesting things. 
To thoroughly enjoy the upper Missouri one 
should be immune to the deadly monotony, and 
a lover of the wild life for its own sake. He 
must possess an appreciation of savage scenery, 
be of a slightly adventurous disposition with an 
optimistic and cheerful mind, and an imagina¬ 
tion capable of soaring above the barb wire fence 
and ignoring the settler’s cabin when he does 
not wish to see it. In addition to all this, if he 
happens to be fairly familiar with the history of 
this old waterway, with its picturesque bands of 
explorers, trappers, hunters, freebooters and In¬ 
dians, I can assure him that he is doubly quali¬ 
fied to enjoy it. 
For twelve years my old friend W. A. Tyler, 
of Idaho, and I had been talking of taking a 
run down the river. Of course we should have 
gone when we first began talking about it, but we 
did not. However, last autumn, 1906, we laid 
our plans, built our boat, and embarked on the 
long deferred voyage. 
Our craft was of galvanized iron, with a 
wooden bottom and frame. In other words, the 
entire outer surface was of galvanized iron, sup¬ 
ported by a wooden form. She was provided 
with air chambers in bow and stern, and had 
two five-inch air pipes curved and fitted on the 
outside, one under each gunwale. She was about 
eighteen feet long, a trifle over four feet beam, 
about fourteen inches deep amidships, by twenty- 
two at bow and stern, with a good deal of over¬ 
hang at both ends, and a decided flare to the 
sides. The bottom was flat with a slight up¬ 
ward curve fore and aft. Not knowing just what 
kind of water to expect we had built her with a 
view to resisting heavy seas and swash without 
shipping much water, and after our experience 
we both decided that everything considered, we 
could hardly have had a better boat for our pur¬ 
pose. 
Shipping boat and outfit by freight we our-' 
selves followed a few days later, and arrived at 
Benton Sept. 18. At the little station, which 
perches up in the hills a mile or more from the 
town, w y e waited for daylight. Then was re¬ 
vealed across the flat, a rather pretty, quiet little 
town half hidden among trees near the river, 
surrounded on all sides by grayish hills and 
bluffs, while off to the south, twenty miles away, 
loomed the blue ridges of the Highwood Moun¬ 
tains, very unlike the great ranges of Idaho which 
w r e had left the day before, but still unmistakable 
mountains, and not unpicturesque in the morning 
light. We breakfasted and spent the day in and 
about town, for our boat had not arrived, and 
w'e must needs wait. 
When w'e recall that Fort Benton was built 
in 1846, and that the town which sprang up 
around it was for several decades a busy, thriv¬ 
ing place, it is not surprising that it has to-day 
a certain air of mature respectability not found 
in many of the newer towns of the west. Little , 
remains to remind one of the old days of the 
