An AI-assisted contemporary historical narrative by Clio Walker, based on the expedition journals and checked sources. It is not the captains' own text or a submission by either of them. This new episode follows on from the rapids of the Columbia and covers November 3 to December 7, 1805: down the tidal river to the estuary, six days pinned on the north shore, the walk out to the sea, the night the whole party gave its opinion on where to winter, the crossing to the south shore, and the choice of the Fort Clatsop site.

On the morning of November 7, 1805, the fog lifted. Clark did not write that at the time; it comes from a note added to his journal later.

That evening the expedition landed on the north bank of the Columbia under a steep hill. There was no level ground, so they spread their mats on round stones for the night. Half a mile out in the river stood a lone rock about fifty feet high.

In the course table Clark compiled later, the column for that day ends with one line: "Ocian in view! O! the joy."

In another journal he wrote at more length. There was great joy in camp: they were in view of the great Pacific they had been so long anxious to see, and they could plainly hear the roar of the waves breaking on the rocky shores. After the word roar he added, "as I Suppose."

The modern editors of the journals add a note here: what they were looking at was the Columbia's estuary, not yet the ocean.

It took them eight more days to reach a place where they could truly see the sea. They spent nearly all of those days pinned down by rain.

Two Sleeps to the Ships

While they were still upriver, the people along the Columbia kept telling them there were ships below.

On the evening of November 3, some local men paddling upstream met them. Whitehouse wrote down their signs: two more sleeps, and the travelers would come to a place where they could see two ships and white people.

The farther down they went, the more they saw of white traders. On November 4 the people on the river wore scarlet and blue blankets, sailors' jackets, overalls and shirts, and hats. Some had muskets, pistols and tin powder flasks. In a large canoe with carved figures on the bow, one man could speak a few words of English. All of them, Ordway noted, were curses.

On November 6 another man told them, in a few English words, that the chief trader who dealt with them was a "Mr. Haley." He showed them a bow of iron that he said Mr. Haley had given him. The editors suggest that "Haley" may have been Samuel Hill, captain of the Boston ship Lydia, who had been at the river's mouth that April.

On November 7 people in two villages along the way made signs that ships lay at the mouth of the river. Others signed that the ships had gone.

Lewis carried copies of the maps made by George Vancouver's British expedition, yet the captains still could not tell whether white traders lived at the mouth or not. Clark leaned toward the view that the ships came only at certain seasons to trade.

Meeting a ship would matter a great deal. Jefferson's 1803 instructions to Lewis said he might send a few men home by sea with copies of the journals, and if the overland return looked too dangerous, the whole party might go home by ship. Even without a sea passage, a ship could resupply them with food and trade goods.

The Dismal Nitch

On November 8 the river widened to five or seven miles, and the water was too salty to drink. The canoes turned into a wide, very shallow bay they called Shallow Bay, today's Grays Bay.

The waves tossed the canoes so hard that several people grew seasick. Clark named them: Reubin Field, Weiser, McNeal, and Sacagawea.

That night the steep hills came right down to the water and no ground was safe from the tide. They camped between the high and low tide marks and raised their baggage on logs.

The next afternoon the flood tide came in with heavy waves and lifted the driftwood along the shore. Many of the trees were nearly two hundred feet long and four to seven feet through. They rolled in the surf and almost crushed the canoes. Only the whole party's efforts saved them.

At the top of the tide the whole camp was under water. Everyone had been wet since the night before. The river was too salty, so they drank rainwater; some who were not used to salt water drank too freely of it and were purged.

Yet the men, Clark wrote, wet and cold as they were, stayed cheerful and anxious to see farther toward the ocean.

On November 10 they tried to round the point ahead and were driven back by waves raised by a northwest wind. They spent the night on a pile of drift logs in a small cove. Every high tide floated the logs they lay on. All they had to eat was the pounded dried fish they had brought from the Great Falls.

At midday on the 11th, in the worst of the wind and waves, five Cathlamet men came in a canoe to sell salmon. One of them wore an old sailor's jacket and trousers and signed that the white people below had given them to him. After selling their fish they paddled straight into the swells to cross the five-mile river. Before they had gone two miles, the canoe vanished behind the waves again and again. Clark said they rode the highest waves he had ever seen a small vessel ride; these were certainly the best canoe navigators he had ever seen.

The same day he complained in his journal that they had been held almost in one place for four days, when their days were precious. The rain loosened the hillside, and small stones kept falling on them.

From three o'clock on the morning of the 12th there was thunder, lightning and hail until daylight, then heavy rain. It would be distressing, Clark wrote, to a feeling person to see their situation now.

They had been wet for eight days. Their robes and leather clothes were rotting, and they had no way to replace them. The canoes had to be sunk with loads of stone so the waves would not dash them to pieces on the rocks. Gibson, Bratton and Willard tried to get around the point in an Indian canoe and were beaten back.

On the 13th Clark sent Colter, Willard and Shannon out in the local canoe that was built to ride high swells, to find out whether there was a good harbor below, and any white people.

On the 14th Colter came back alone. The waves had kept them from going far. He had found no white people and no bay, only a good canoe harbor and two Indian camps not far below. That afternoon Lewis set out on foot down the shore with Drouillard, the Field brothers and Frazer.

At about three in the afternoon of the 15th the wind finally dropped. Clark loaded the canoes in haste and left "this dismal nitch." By his count, since November 5 the rain had never stopped for more than two hours at a time: eleven days of rain, and the most disagreeable time he had known.

Around the point lay a beautiful sandy beach. Beside it stood a deserted village of thirty-six houses, inhabited by nothing but fleas.

Shannon met them there with five local men. The night before, he said, these men had stolen two guns from under his and Willard's heads. Lewis happened to arrive, and the frightened men handed the guns over. Clark told them that if anyone stole from them again, he would have him shot.

The tide was coming in, and the ocean swells rolled straight at them. Clark camped on the highest spot on the beach. He could see plainly that this was as far as they could go by water. From Point Adams in the south to Cape Disappointment in the north, the ocean lay open before them.

Gass wrote that the ocean was at this time "more raging than pacific."

Names on the Trees

The camp stood on the beach west of today's McGowan, Washington, southeast of Chinook Point. Clark surveyed the mouth of the river from here, and it is known today as Station Camp.

The 16th was fair, and they spread everything out to dry. The hunters brought in two deer, a crane and two ducks; York, the man Clark enslaved, killed two geese and eight brant on his own.

Gass wrote that day that they had come to the end of their voyage, and that the purpose of the expedition, to find a way to the Pacific by the Missouri and the Columbia, had been fully accomplished.

Whitehouse was more practical. The canoes could go no farther; once the necessary discoveries were made, they would go back a short way up the river and find winter quarters. They guessed that game would be more plentiful upriver.

Soon after midday on the 17th Lewis returned. He had gone around Cape Disappointment and some way up the coast to the north. Ordway wrote down the news they brought back: they had seen the harbor where the ships had lain, but the ships were all gone.

In the evening the principal Chinook chief came with his family. Clark judged the Chinook nation at about four hundred souls, living on the creeks and ponds north of the river's mouth, living on fish and roots, and well supplied with good muskets. The editors take this chief to be the one-eyed Comcomly, who became the most powerful figure at the mouth of the river and lived until 1829 or 1830.

Clark asked who else wanted to see more of the ocean and would go with him in the morning. Those who set out with him the next day were Sergeants Ordway and Pryor, the Field brothers, Shannon, Colter, Bratton, Weiser, Labiche, the interpreter Charbonneau, and York. The rest said the stretch of sea they could see from camp was enough.

At first light on the 18th they followed the bay toward Cape Disappointment. A whale's carcass lay on the beach. Near the whale, Reubin Field shot a huge buzzard that measured nine and a half feet from wingtip to wingtip. The editors say it was the first California condor the expedition collected. Labiche shot forty-eight plover along the way, and they plucked and cooked them for dinner.

On a deep bay where ships often anchored, Clark found Lewis's name cut on a tree. He cut his own name and the date beside it, and the words "by land." Several of the men cut their names too.

Toward evening they crossed the half-mile-wide low neck behind Cape Disappointment and climbed a bald hill covered with coarse grass. The waves came in from every side and broke into foam on the bars at the river's mouth. The men, Clark wrote, beholding the high waves dashing against the rocks and this immense ocean, appeared much satisfied with their trip and full of astonishment.

That night he noted in another journal, almost in passing, that the men were all cheerful and expressed a desire to winter near the falls.

On the 19th Clark walked four miles north along a long sandy beach and marked his name and the date on a small pine. A distant headland at the far end of the beach he named Point Lewis, after his particular friend.

A Belt of Blue Beads

On the afternoon of the 20th Clark came back to camp and found many Chinooks around Lewis, among them two chiefs, Comcomly and Chillarlawil. The captains gave them medals and gave one of them a flag.

One Chinook man wore a robe sewn from two sea otter skins. Clark said the fur was more beautiful than any he had ever seen.

The captains offered him all kinds of goods for it. Lewis offered him a blanket and a coat among the rest, and he refused everything. In the end the robe was bought with the belt of blue beads that Sacagawea wore around her waist.

The next day the captains gave her a coat of blue cloth for the belt.

On the 22nd another storm blew in from the southeast. The waves washed over the camp and split a canoe. The whole party sat soaked in their shelters. Clark wrote: "O! how horriable is the day."

On the 23rd the wind died. Lewis branded his name and the date on a tree, Clark carved his name on an alder, and the men all cut the first letters of their names on trees near the camp.

That evening seven Clatsops crossed from the far shore with two sea otter skins. Clark, just to test the man who had them, offered his watch, a handkerchief, a bunch of red beads and an American dollar. All were refused. What the man wanted was "ti-â co-mo-shack," chief beads, which were in fact the most common blue beads. The expedition had very few of those left.

The skins were not bought. The small store of goods that remained was what they would trade for food on the way home, and it could not grow any smaller.

A List of Names

The 24th was clear. During the day the captains caught up on the astronomical observations the weather had kept them from making.

In the evening they gathered the whole party to decide where to spend the winter.

Clark first set out the reasons in his journal. The local people had little food stored up, and what they had was so dear that a winter's supply of roots and dried fish would cost ten times the goods and clothing the party had left. They would have to live by hunting. The local people all said elk were plentiful on the far shore, and deer far up the river. Elk were large and easy to kill, their meat was better than lean deer in winter, and their skins could be made into clothing. Near the sea they could also make salt. The people said, too, that the ships would come back to trade in three months, and if they met one they could buy more small goods to trade for food. And the coast seemed warmer than the country across the mountains, which mattered to a party dressed entirely in leather.

Then he wrote down each person's opinion, one line at a time.

The three sergeants, Ordway, Pryor and Gass, came first, followed by the privates one by one. Nearly every name was followed by the same words: cross the river and examine the other side. Only Shields wanted to go straight to the Sandy River.

After each name came a second place: the falls, the Sandy River, or "up." The table does not say what the second place was for; it looks like where they would go if the far shore would not do, but that is only an inference. Clark's tally at the foot of the table reads: the falls six, the Sandy River ten, up the river to look out twelve.

Charbonneau's line is blank.

The last line on the list is York's. Like the others, he chose to cross; after it came one more word: "lookout." York was enslaved by Clark. The National Park Service notes that when the expedition returned, every member received double pay and 320 acres of land except York, who remained enslaved. On this night his opinion went down on the same sheet as everyone else's.

Below the table Clark added one line: "Janey" favored a place where there were plenty of "Potas." Janey was his nickname for Sacagawea. The Park Service takes "Potas" to mean wapato, a root they had been buying from local people all these days, which Clark said roasted like a potato. She was not on the list and her opinion was not counted, but it was written down.

Lewis's view is on the same page: cross tomorrow and examine the other side; if the hunting is good, winter there, as salt is an object; if not, go to the Sandy River. He added that a ship would probably come in that winter.

Clark was for crossing at once, to learn the disposition of the people there, whether food could be had, and whether a ship might arrive before they set out in the spring. If they could meet a ship and buy goods, he thought, it would more than make up for a winter of living on poor deer and elk. He also wrote that he viewed salt water as an evil, because it was not healthy.

Ordway's record is the shortest: the officers, with the opinion of the party, decided to cross the river and look for winter quarters as near the ocean as possible, for the sake of making salt.

Rain on the Other Shore

On the 25th the wind was too high to cross from camp. They went upriver, meaning to cross where the river narrowed, and on the way they tried once, but the waves nearly swamped the canoes and they put back to shore. The seven Clatsops who were traveling with them took their small canoe through the swells and went home across the river.

That night they camped again near the rock where they had first "viewed the ocean" on November 7.

On the 26th the canoes finally crossed the river and went down the south shore. At a Cathlamet village of nine large wooden houses they bought a little wapato at a very high price. Blue beads, Clark noted, were the people's great trade. On an island below, he saw canoes set up on scaffolds with the dead laid in them.

On the morning of the 27th an ax went missing. It was found at last under a local man's robe. Clark shamed the man severely and told the people not to follow them. The canoes rounded a point running a mile and a half into the river, which they called Point William, today's Tongue Point. The waves drove them ashore once more, and they camped by an old Indian hut at the neck of the point.

They would stay there ten days.

On the 28th a southwest wind and heavy rain went on all night. The tents and sails were so full of holes and so rotten that they kept nothing dry. Everyone's robes were wet and rotting, and there were no new ones. The hunters could not get through the thick woods, and the swans and geese would not let them near. All they had to eat was still the pounded fish bought at the Great Falls. At noon the wind shifted to the northwest, and for a time it blew so hard that Clark thought the trees would be torn up by the roots; many did fall. He wrote: "O how Tremendious is the day."

On the 29th Lewis took Drouillard, Reubin Field, Shannon, Colter and Labiche in the small canoe that could ride the swells and went down the shore to look for the place the people said had elk. Clark stayed to keep the camp. With nothing else to wear, the men spent the day by the fire drying and patching their leather clothes. The wind was always in the wrong quarter, and smoke filled the camp and hurt their eyes.

On the 30th several men were sick with loose bowels and cramps. Clark blamed the pounded fish mixed with salt water and ordered that fresh water be used from then on.

That day Sacagawea gave Clark a small piece of bread. She had made it from a little flour she had kept carefully for her child, but it had been wet and was a little sour. Clark said he ate it with great satisfaction: it was the only mouthful of bread he had tasted in several months.

On December 1 the waves still beat on the rocks and beaches to the southwest and northwest, roaring like an immense waterfall in the distance. Clark wrote that in the twenty-four days since they had come in view of this western ocean, the roar had not stopped for a day, "for I cannot Say Pacific," since he had not seen one pacific day since arriving near it.

Lewis had been gone three days, with no word.

The First Elk

On December 2 Clark fell ill. He could no longer stomach the pounded fish, and most of the men were weak with loose bowels. York and two others paddled up a creek to fish and hunt birds and came back with nothing.

In the evening Joseph Field brought in the marrow bones of an elk. He had killed it six miles away, the first elk the expedition had killed on this side of the Rocky Mountains. Clark at once sent six men in an empty canoe to bring in the meat.

On the morning of the 3rd the meat arrived. Clark said it revived the men's spirits very much. He himself was still ill and could not eat even the elk. A canoe of local people passed by, and he traded fishhooks for some wapato, which he ate with a little elk soup and found that it gave him great relief.

Sacagawea chopped up the two shank bones after the marrow was taken out and boiled them down for a pint of grease. Clark said it was better than the tallow of the animal itself.

That day Clark carved on a large pine on the neck of the point: "William Clark December 3rd 1805. By Land from the U. States in 1804 & 1805." The editors suggest he may have modeled it on Alexander Mackenzie, who reached the Pacific across Canada in 1793 and also wrote "by land" on a rock.

That night Pryor and Gibson came back. They had lost their way in the woods but had killed six elk, which they gutted and left where they fell.

On the 4th Clark sent Pryor with six men to bring in the meat. His appetite had returned. All seven hunters said there were plenty of elk around the bay below. But there was still no word from Lewis. Clark wrote that he feared some accident had happened to his canoe or his party.

On the 5th he wrote again: Lewis's long absence made him uneasy, and a thousand conjectures crowded into his mind.

Around midday Lewis came back with three men. On a small bay below he had found a river, with a place beside it fit for winter quarters and enough elk nearby for the winter. They had killed six elk and five deer on the way and left two men to guard the meat.

The whole party, Clark said, was well pleased. Gass wrote the same day that he had never known so much wet weather as on this coast: in a month they had had three fair days.

Epilogue

On the 6th the tide ran thirteen inches higher than the day before and flooded the camp, and they moved it to higher ground.

On the morning of the 7th it was fair. The whole party loaded the canoes and set out down the river against the tide.

The waves were high. Off the point they met Pryor's party, but the canoes could not land for them until they had rounded into the bay. Pryor said they had been lost for a day and a half in the woods, and when they found the elk most of the meat had spoiled. They brought back only four skins.

York had not kept up. He had stopped to fix his load and missed his way. After the party ate breakfast by the bay, Clark waited about half an hour more before he came in.

Clark named the bay Meriwether's Bay, after Lewis's Christian name. Lewis, he said, was no doubt the first white man to survey it. In fact William Broughton of Vancouver's expedition had surveyed it in 1792 and named it after Sir George Young of the British Navy; it is still Youngs Bay today.

From the south side of the bay the canoes went up a small river for three miles and landed at the first high ground on its west bank. The site stood about thirty feet above the highest tide, some two hundred yards from the river, thick with tall straight pines. It was, Clark wrote, certainly the most eligible place for their purposes in the neighborhood. Ordway carried the baggage up the rise and wrote that here they meant to build a fort and stay through the winter, if game could be found.

A month earlier, in the November 7 column of his course table, Clark had written: "Ocian in view! O! the joy." Twenty-four days later he wrote: "I cannot Say Pacific."

The editors found that the expedition never met a trading ship on the coast. If "Mr. Haley" was Captain Hill, he came to the river's mouth once in April and May of 1805, and again only in the spring and summer of the following year, after the expedition had gone.

Now, with their backs to that ocean, they carried their baggage into the pines. No ship had come. They would wait for spring on elk, sea salt, and the wapato from the people's canoes.

Sources, Editions and Boundaries

1. Primary source: Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). Clark's entries for November 3 to December 7, 1805, and Lewis's short journal of November 29 to December 1 (Codex Ia), are in vol. 6 (November 2, 1805–March 22, 1806); Ordway is in vol. 9, Gass in vol. 10, Whitehouse in vol. 11 (only his fair copy survives after November 7). Read day by day in the edition's UNL digital version, November 3 to December 7, 1805 (35 entries), with the same-day accounts of Ordway, Gass and Whitehouse and the editorial notes: https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1805-11-03 through https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1805-12-07 (the address changes with the date); introduction to vol. 6: https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.introduction.v06 . In this period Clark often kept two or three parallel records; "another journal" refers to them in the order the Moulton edition prints them. Except for November 29 to December 1, Lewis kept no journal in this period; his actions here come from Clark's and the others' records. 2. Comparison text only: Project Gutenberg 8419, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, 1804–1806, November 3 to December 7, 1805, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8419/pg8419.txt (local copy sha256 e57f1eb6…). It is an electronic transcription that names no base text and gives only the captains' journals, so it is used for comparison, not cited as a source; the same-day records of Ordway, Gass and Whitehouse are all taken from the Moulton edition. Several quoted phrases ("O! the joy," "distressing to a feeling person," "By Land from the U. States," "a 1000 conjectures," "beholding with estonishment") appear only in the Moulton edition. Gass's journal is the narrative edited by David McKeehan and published in 1807, as printed in the Moulton edition; "more raging than pacific" comes from that text. 3. National Park Service: Middle Village – Station Camp (updated January 10, 2022), for the camp's location, the ten-day stay, and York's and Sacagawea's inclusion when opinions were taken: https://www.nps.gov/places/middle-village-station-camp.htm ; The Vote at Station Camp, for Sacagawea's opinion not being tallied: https://www.nps.gov/places/the-vote-at-station-camp.htm ; November 24, 1805 – Mouth of the Columbia, for the point that the journals mention no democratic "vote" and that some scholars think the word misleading: https://www.nps.gov/articles/november-24-1805-mouth-of-the-columbia.htm ; Votes During the Lewis and Clark Expedition, for "Potas" as wapato: https://www.nps.gov/articles/votes-during-the-lewis-and-clark-expedition.htm ; Dismal Nitch (updated January 6, 2022), for the site of the nitch: https://www.nps.gov/places/dismal-nitch.htm ; York (updated August 1, 2025), for York's enslavement, the double pay and 320 acres he did not receive, Clark's initial refusal of his requests for freedom, and his dates and places (born c. 1770 in Virginia, died c. 1834 in Tennessee): https://www.nps.gov/people/york.htm . 4. Identifications: Pillar Rock, Grays Bay (Clark's Shallow Bay), Point Ellice, Chinook Point, Station Camp, Tongue Point (Clark's Point William), Youngs Bay (Clark's Meriwether's Bay), the Long Beach area and the Cathlamet village near today's Knappa, Oregon follow the Moulton editorial notes; the site of the Dismal Nitch follows the Park Service. "Mr. Haley" as Samuel Hill of the Lydia, the Chinook chief as Comcomly, the condor, and Mackenzie as the model for Clark's inscription are the editors' identifications or suggestions. Clark believed Lewis was the first white man to survey Youngs Bay; the editors (Moulton edition, December 7, note 14) point out that Broughton had already surveyed and named it in 1792. 5. Boundaries: on November 7 they were looking at the estuary, not the ocean itself (editorial note). "Ocian in view! O! the joy." is in Clark's course-and-distance table in Codex H (November 2–16) under the date November 7; the UNL edition prints it under November 16. The table was compiled later, not written on the spot, and the story places the line by its date column. "Fog cleared" appears only in a bracketed "NB" note added later to Clark's second journal for November 7 ("in the morning when fog cleared off just below last village"), usually attributed to Biddle, though the editors' note for that day does not say so (to be verified). It is attached to "Great joy in camp," not to the course table, and the story keeps the two apart. On the November 24 list, the one different opinion is Clark's "Jo. Shields," for the Sandy River; the Park Service's Votes article names Joseph Field as the one who did not want to cross. The story follows the Moulton edition. The table also has a separate line for "Jo Fields" (Joseph Field), who chose to cross, with "up" as his second place, so the Park Service's reading does not fit the table. Clark's own tally is falls 6, Sandy River 10, up or look out 12; Moulton's note 3 to November 24 recounts the names as falls 6, "S," "S. R." and "Sandy R" together 9, and "lookout" and "up" 14. The story gives only Clark's figures and makes no new count. Note 3 also says the "S" in "Cross and examine S" could mean the south side of the river or the Sandy River. That the second place was a fallback if the far side failed is not stated in the table or the editors' notes; it is this story's inference. Sacagawea's opinion was written below the table and not counted; Charbonneau's line is blank. Whether this was a vote is disputed: Moulton's note 3 says "this table evidently represents the vote taken," while the Park Service notes that the journals mention no vote and some scholars think the word misleading. Clark's second journal speaks of the "Solicitations of every individual" and Gass of the party being "consulted," so the story speaks of a list and of opinions. York's opinion was recorded, but he was still enslaved by Clark and later received neither the pay nor the land. The Park Service gives York's birth as c. 1770 in Virginia, exact place unknown, and his death as c. 1834 in Tennessee. It also says that by 1832 Clark told Washington Irving that York's hauling business had failed and that he had died of cholera in Tennessee; the published source for Irving's record is to be verified. That Clark at first refused York's requests for freedom follows the Park Service, which quotes Clark's 1808 letter; the published edition of the letter is to be verified. On December 5 Gass has Lewis back at about eleven and Ordway and Whitehouse at noon; the story says "around midday." Clark puts the Fort Clatsop site three miles up the river, Gass about two; the story follows Clark. A passage of November 21 concerning sexual commerce is left out. The link between "Mr. Haley" and Hill is a conjecture, and the story says "may have been." Modern places are regional map references; the Tongue Point camp is mapped by Astoria; the Cathlamet village, the November 26 camp and Lewis's scouting camps near Youngs Bay are not mapped. No dialogue, inner thoughts or weather have been invented. Indigenous words and actions reach us mostly through outsiders' records, and carry the writers' biases and misunderstandings. 6. The journals are in the public domain. Both language versions are original adaptations; modern research and annotation are not copied at length.