[Illustration: COPPER SMELTER AT GREAT FALLS, MONTANA.]
In 1803 Jefferson sent a message to congress, asking for an appropriation of $2,500 for the exploration of the Missouri and Columbia rivers. The result was that the amount was granted. Lewis and Clark were chosen to take charge of the expedition.
The expedition spent the winter of 1803-1804 near the mouth of the Missouri river. The Northwest was then a wilderness. The expedition ascended the Missouri river to Fort Mandan north of Bismarck, where they laid over during the winter of 1804-1805. Their means of transport were several rowboats. July, 1805, they arrived at the falls of the Missouri river, where they spent two weeks surveying and making a portage. Lewis and Clark were the first white men who visited the falls of the Missouri river, or at least they were the first to make its existence known to the world.
The lower falls, known, as the Great Falls, is a perpendicular fall of about ninety feet. The river at this point is estimated to contain a volume of water about three times greater than that of the Ohio at Pittsburg. This immense volume is here confined between rocky walls on either side, from two hundred to five hundred feet in height and about three hundred yards in width. Next to the right bank nearly half the stream descends vertically with such terrific force as to send continuous and always beautiful clouds of spray sometimes two hundred feet or more in the air. The other side of the river is precipitated over successive ledges of from ten to twenty feet, forming a magnificent view some two hundred yards in breadth and ninety feet in perpendicular elevation. A vast basin of surging, foaming waters succeeds below, its deep green color and commotion betraying a prodigious volume and depth.
[Illustration: From Painting by C. M. Russell.
LEWIS AND CLARK MEETING THE MANDAN INDIANS.]
Five miles above are the Crooked and Rainbow Falls, the latter fifty feet in perpendicular descent. Here the entire river, one thousand two hundred feet wide, hurls itself over an unbroken rocky rim, as regular in its outline as a work of art, into a vast rock-bound amphitheater, where when the sun is shining a rainbow spans the river from bank to bank. This with the sprays, the roar and commotion of the water make a fascinating scene. From this rainbow the falls received its name.