51. Fort Peck Lake The Missouri River Near the Musselshell Fort
Peck Lake (view west, upstream) n 19 May 1805 the expedition
camped on the east side of the neck, or "gouge," in the Missouri
River where Musselshell River joins it, just out of the photo at
left. It had been an exhausting day. "The river" — the Missouri,
that is—"was croked, rappid and containing more sawyers," Lewis
complained, "than we have seen in the same space" since they
passed the Platte River. To top it off, earlier in the day, when
Lewis's dog had swum "as usual" into the river to retrieve a
beaver one of the men had shot, the big, wounded rodent bit the
dog's hind leg, severing an artery. "It was with great
difficulty that I could stop the blood," Lewis wrote. "I fear it
will yet prove fatal to him." Fortunately it did not. Lewis
remarked that the water of the Missouri had become
semitransparent, "but still retains it's whitish hue." The
photograph captures it at a moment when a buttermilk sky dapples
both lake and land with shadows, a