About noon the following day, the swift current of the river carried the four strangers "near the breast of a mountain on which they could plainly see bighorns," and at night they passed "the wigwam," no doubt referring to Chimney rock.

Then there was the long journey through prairies the like of which they had never dreamed, and at the river mouth they were taken on a keel-boat coming down the Missouri.

General Clarke, a brother of the explorer, was then superintendent of Indian affairs at St. Louis, and when these Indians met him and told him their mission, he was dumbfounded.

It seemed that Lewis and Clarke had left some fragmentary knowledge of religion with the tribe when they visited it in 1804, and this, with rude fragments of Christianity that came to them from French, had left the tribe with a thirst for more knowledge of the Book of Life.

And these four "savages" had braved the terrors of an unknown and perilous wilderness, on a three thousand mile journey in search of the Christ. They had "seen his Star in the East."

General Clarke entertained and fed them royally after the manner of white people, but it was too much for their uneducated systems, and the two elder members of the party died from excesses. The others remained for some time, being taken from one manner of white man's amusements to another, and finally on the announcement of their intention to return to their people, they were given a farewell banquet.