"'The water runs with great violence from one rock to the other, so as to render the passage of any thing impossible,' [William] Clark wrote of the river he named for [Meriwether] Lewis. Now known as the Salmon, or the River of No Return, it still plows a daunting course through the mountains. Clark's reconnoiter of the river was halted by a boulder field, and he was forced to turn back. With no river route open to them, the captains readied themselves for the treacherous terrain of the Bitteroots."
—From the National Geographic book Lewis & Clark: Voyage of Discovery, 1998
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