[First Across the Continent by Noah Brooks]@TWC D-Link bookFirst Across the Continent CHAPTER II -- Beginning a Long Journey 5/9
The other two boats were of that variety of open craft known as pirogue, a craft shaped like a flat-iron, square-sterned, flat-bottomed, roomy, of light draft, and usually provided with four oars and a square sail which could be used when the wind was aft, and which also served as a tent, or night shelter, on shore.
Two horses, for hunting or other occasional service, were led along the banks of the river. As we have seen, President Jefferson, whose master mind organized and devised this expedition, had dwelt longingly on the prospect of crossing the continent from the headwaters of the Missouri to the headwaters of the then newly-discovered Columbia.
The route thus explored was more difficult than that which was later travelled by the first emigrants across the continent to California.
That route lies up the Platte River, through what is known as the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, by Great Salt Lake and down the valley of the Humboldt into California, crossing the Sierra Nevada at any one of several points leading into the valley of the Sacramento.
The route, which was opened by the gold-seekers, was followed by the first railroads built across the continent.
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