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CAPTAIN LEWIS FINDS THE GREAT FALLS
June 13, 1805
Captain Meriwether Lewis
... my ears were saluted with the agreeable sound of a fall of water
and advancing a little further I saw the spray arrise above the
plain like a collumn of smoke which would frequently dispear again
in an instant caused I presume by the wind which blew pretty hard
from the S.W. I did not however loose my direction to this point
which soon began to make a roaring too tremendious to be mistaken
for any cause short of the great falls of the Missouri. ... to gaze
on this sublimely grand specticle ... formes the grandest sight
I ever beheld, ... irregular and somewhat projecting rocks below
receives the water in it's passage down and brakes it into a perfect
white foam which assumes a thousand forms in a moment sometimes
flying up in jets of sparkling foam to the hight of fifteen or twenty
feet and are scarcely formed before large roling bodies of the same
beaten and foaming water is thrown over and conceals them. ... from
the reflection of the sun on the sprey or mist which arrises from
these falls there is a beatifull rainbow produced which adds not
a little to the beauty of this majestically grand senery. after
wrighting this imperfect discription I again viewed the falls and
was so much disgusted with the imperfect idea which it conveyed
of the scene that I determined to draw my pen across it and begin
agin, but then reflected that I could not perhaps succeed better
than pening the first impressions of the mind; I wished for the
pencil of Salvator Rosa [a Titian] or the pen of Thompson, that
I might be enabled to give to the enlightened world some just idea
of this truly magnifficent and sublimely grand object which has
from the commencement of time been concealed from the view of civilized
man; ... of it's kind I will venture to ascert is second to but
one in the known world.
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