SCOUTING FOR GIRLS 
22 
to the Pacific Coast, this sixteen-year-old girl never fal- 
tered. No dangers of hunger, thirst, cold or darkness 
were too much for her. From the Jefferson to the Yel- 
lowstone River she was the only guide they had ; on her 
instinct for the right way, her reading of the sun, the 
stars and the trees, depended the lives of all of them. 
When they fell sick she nursed them: when they lost 
heart at the wildness of their venture, she cheered them. 
Their party grew smaller and smaller, for Lewis and 
Clark had separated early in the expedition, and a part 
of Clark's own party fell off when they discovered a 
natural route over the Continental Divide where wagons 
could not travel. Later, most of those who remained, de- 
cided to go down the Jefferson River in canoes ,**but Clark, 
still guided by the plucky Indian girl, persisted in fighting 
his way on pony back overland, and after a week of this 
journeying, crowded full of discomforts and dangers, she 
brought him out in triumph at the Yellowstone, where the 
river bursts out from the lower canon, — and the Great 
Northwest was opened up for all time! 
The women of Oregon have raised a statue to this 
young explorer, and there she stands in Portland, facing 
the Coast, pointing to the Columbia River where it reach- 
es the sea. 
These great virtues of daring and endurance never die 
out of the race; though the conditions of our life today, 
when most of the exploring has been done, do not de- 
mand them of us in just the form the ''Bird Woman" 
needed, still, if they die out of the nation, and especially, 
out of the women of the nation, something has been lost 
that no amount of book education can ever replace. Saca- 
jawea, had no maps to study — she made maps, and roads 
have been built over her foot steps. And so we Scouts, 
not to lose this great spirit, study the stars and the sup 
and the trees and try to learn a few of the wood secrets 
