Partially settled landscape : Lewis and Clark near St. Louis -- Changing old river -- Countryside pleasant, rich, and partially settled : through the eastern woodlands -- Into the tall-grass prairie -- Restoring the lower Missouri River -- Fire, wind, and water : the Platte River and the Loess Hills within the prairies -- Winter on the plains : Lewis and Clark among the Mandans -- America's Serengeti -- Scenes of visionary enchantment : the upper Missouri -- "Pleasingly beautiful" and "sublimely grand" : pathways to the mountains -- Passage steep and stoney, strewn with fallen timber : the Bitterroot Mountains -- Roll on, Columbia, roll on : down the Snake and Columbia Rivers -- Changing old forests at the mouth of the Columbia -- In the wake of Lewis and Clark.

"America's great epic of exploration - the journey of Lewis and Clark - was also one of the most successful scientific expeditions in history." "In this illustrated volume, which features more than one hundred photographs and maps, most in full color, noted ecologist and writer Daniel Botkin traces the footsteps of the two explorers as they journeyed from St. Louis, through the breathtaking vistas of the tall-grass prairie and Big Sky country, over the arduous Bitterroot Mountains on the ancient Lolo Trail, to arrive finally at the Pacific coast and its rugged, rainy, and darkly wooded landscape."--Jacket.