Book II INTO THE WEST (continued 4)

"We will take you and your wife down if you choose to go," said Captain Clark to Charboneau.

"I haf no acquaintance, no prospect to mak' a leeving dere," answered the interpreter. "I mus' leeve as I haf done."

"I will take your son and have him educated as a white child should be," continued the Captain.

Charboneau and Sacajawea looked at one another and at their beautiful boy now nineteen months old, prattling in their midst.

"We would be weeling eef de child were weaned," slowly spake Charboneau. "Een wan year, he be ole enough to leaf he moder. I den tak' eem to you eef you be so friendly to raise eem as you t'ink proper."

"Bring him to me in one year. I will take the child," said Captain Clark.

Captain Lewis paid Charboneau five hundred dollars, loaded Sacajawea with what gifts he could, and left them in the Mandan country.

All was now ready for the descent to St. Louis. The boats, lashed together in pairs, were at the shore. Big White was surrounded by his friends, seated in a circle, solemnly smoking. The women wept aloud; the little children trembled and hid behind their mothers.

More courageous than any, Shahaka immediately sent his wife and son with their baggage on board. The interpreter, Jussaume, with his wife and two children, accompanied them. Yes, Madame Jussaume was going to Washington!

Sacajawea, modest princess of the Shoshones, heroine of the great expedition, stood with her babe in arms and smiled upon them from the shore. So had she stood in the Rocky Mountains pointing out the gates. So had she followed the great rivers, navigating the continent.

Sacajawea's hair was neatly braided, her nose was fine and straight, and her skin pure copper like the statue in some old Florentine gallery. Madonna of her race, she had led the way to a new time. To the hands of this girl, not yet eighteen, had been intrusted the key that unlocked the road to Asia.

Some day upon the Bozeman Pass, Sacajawea's statue will stand beside that of Clark. Some day, where the rivers part, her laurels will vie with those of Lewis. Across North America a Shoshone Indian Princess touched hands with Jefferson, opening her country.

All the chiefs had gathered to see the boats start. "Stay but one moment," they said.

Clark stepped back. Black Cat handed him a pipe, as if for benediction. The solemn smoke-wreaths soon rolled upward.

"Tell our Great Fader de young men will remain at home and not mak' war on any people, except in self-defence."

"Tell de Rickara to come and visit. We mean no harm."

"Tak' good care dis chief. He will bring word from de Great Fader."

It was a promise and a prayer. Strong chiefs turned away with misgiving and trepidation as they saw Shahaka depart with the white men.

Dropping below their old winter quarters at Fort Mandan, Lewis and Clark saw but a row of pickets left. The houses lay in ashes, destroyed by an accidental fire. All were there for the homeward pull but Coalter. He had gone back with Hancock and Dickson, two adventurers from Boone's settlement, to discover the Yellowstone Park.

On the fourth day out three Frenchmen were met approaching the Mandan nation with the message,—

"Seven hundert Sioux haf pass de Rickara to mak' war on de Mandan an' Minnetaree." Fortunately, Shahaka did not understand, and no one told him.

The Arikara village greeted the passing boats. Lewis, still lame, requested Clark to go up to the village. Like children confessing their misdeeds the Arikaras began:

"We cannot keep the peace! Our young men follow the Sioux!"

The wild Cheyennes, with their dogs and horses and handsome leathern lodges, were here on a trading visit, to exchange with the Arikaras meat and robes for corn and beans. They were a noble race, of straight limbs and Roman noses, unaccustomed to the whites, shy and cautious.

"We war against none but the Sioux, with whom we have battled for ever," they said.

Everywhere there was weeping and mourning. "My son, my son, he has been slain by the Sioux!"

Between the lands of the warring nations surged seas of buffalo, where to-day are the waving bonanza wheat fields of North Dakota.

From an eminence Clark looked over the prairies. "More buffalo than ever I have seen before at one time,"—and he had seen many. "If it be not impossible to calculate the moving multitude that darkens the plains, twenty thousand would be no exaggerated estimate."

They were now well into the country of the great Sioux Indian Confederacy. Arms and ammunition were inspected.

The sharp air thrilled and filled them with new vigour. No wonder the Sioux were never still. The ozone of the Arctic was in their veins, the sweeping winds drove them, the balsamic prairie was their bed, the sky their canopy. They never shut themselves up in stuffy mud huts, as did the Mandans; they lived in tents. Unrestrained, unregenerate, there was in them the fire of the Six Nations, of King Philip and of Pontiac. Tall, handsome, finely formed, agile, revengeful, intelligent, capable,—they loved their country and they hated strangers. So did the Greeks. An effeminate nation would have fallen before them as did the Roman before the Goth, but in the Anglo-Saxon they met their master.

"Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!"

As anticipated, Black Buffalo and his pirate band were on the hills. Whether that fierce cry meant defiance or greeting no man could tell.

"Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!"

The whole band rushed down to the shore, and even out into the water, shouting invitations to land, and waving from the sand-banks.

But too fresh in memory was the attempt to carry off Captain Clark. Jubilant, hopeful, and full of the fire of battle as the white men were, yet no one wished to test the prowess of the Sioux.

Unwilling to venture an interview, the boats continued on their way. Black Buffalo shook his war bonnet defiantly, and returning to the hill smote the earth three times with the butt of his rifle, the registration of a mighty oath against the whites.

Leaving behind them a wild brandishing of bows, arrows, and tomahawks, and an atmosphere filled with taunts, insults, and imprecations, the boats passed out of sight.

Wafted on the wind followed that direful "Whoop-ah-ho-o-oh!" ending with the piercing shrill Indian yell that for sixty years froze the earliest life blood of Minnesota and Dakota.

Here in the land of the Teton Sioux was to be planted the future Fort Rice, where exactly sixty years after Lewis and Clark, there crossed the Missouri one of the most powerful, costly, and best equipped expeditions ever sent out against hostile Indians,—four thousand cavalry, eight hundred mounted infantry, twelve pieces of artillery, three hundred government teams, three hundred beef steers, and fifteen steamboats to carry supplies,—to be joined here on the Fourth of July, 1864, by an emigrant train of one hundred and sixty teams and two hundred and fifty people,—the van guard of Montana settlement. The Sioux were defeated in the Bad Lands, and the emigrants were carried safely through to Helena, where they and their descendants live to-day.

Already sweeping up the Missouri, Lewis and Clark met advancing empire. Near Vermilion River, James Aird was camping with a license to trade among the Sioux.

"What is the news from St. Louis?"

There on the borders of a future great State, Lewis and Clark first heard that Burr and Hamilton had fought a duel and Hamilton was killed; that three hundred American troops were cantoned at Bellefontaine, a new log fort on the Missouri; that Spain had taken a United States frigate on the Mediterranean; that two British ships of war had fired on an American ship in the port of New York, killing the Captain's brother.

Great was the indignation in the United States against Jefferson and the impressment of American seamen.

"The money spent for Louisiana would have been much better used in building fighting ships."

"The President had much better be protecting our rights than cutting up animals and stuffing the skins of dead raccoons."

"Where is our national honour? Gone, abandoned on the Mississippi."

And these coureurs on the Mississippi heard that the conflict foreseen by Napoleon, when he gave us Louisiana, was raging now in all its fury, interdicting the commerce of the world.

To their excited ears the river rushed and rocked, the earth rumbled, with the roar of cannon. To themselves Lewis and Clark seemed a very small part of the forces that make and unmake nations,—and yet that expedition meant more to the world than the field of Waterloo!

The next noon, on ascending the hill of Floyd's Bluff they found the Indians had opened the grave of their comrade. Reverently it was filled again.

Home from the buffalo hunt in the plains of the Nebraska, the Omahas were firing guns to signal their return to gather in their harvest of corn, beans, and pumpkins. Keel boats, barges, and bateaux came glistening into view,—Auguste Chouteau with merchandise to trade with the Yanktons, another Chouteau to the Platte, a trader with two men to the Pawnee Loupes, and Joseph La Croix with seven men bound for the Omahas.

Through the lessening distance Clark recognised on one of the barges his old comrade, Robert McClellan, the wonderful scout of Wayne's army, who had ridden on many an errand of death. Since Wayne's victory McClellan had been a ranger still, but now the Indians were quieting down,—all except Tecumseh.

"The country has long since given you up," he told the Captain. "We have word from Jefferson to seek for news of Lewis and Clark. The general opinion in the United States is that you are lost in the unfathomable depths of the continent. But President Jefferson has hopes. The last heard of you was at the Mandan villages."

With a laugh they listened to their own obituaries. On the same barge with McClellan was Gravelines with orders from Jefferson to instruct the Arikaras in agriculture, and Dorion to help make way through the Sioux.

"Brave Raven, the Arikara chief, died in Washington," said Gravelines. "I am on my way to them with a speech from the President and the presents which have been made to the chief."

How home now tugged at their heart strings! Eager to be on the way, they bade farewell to McClellan.

Down, down they shot along, wind, current, and paddle in their favour, past shores where the freebooting Kansas Indians robbed the traders, past increasing forests of walnut, elm, oak, hickory.

The men were now reduced to a biscuit apiece. Wild turkeys gobbled on shore, but the party paused not a moment to hunt.

On the twentieth a mighty shout went up. They heard the clank of cow bells, and saw tame cattle feeding on the hills of Charette, the home of Daniel Boone. With cheers and firing of guns they landed at the village.

"We are indeet astonished," exclaimed the joyful habitants, grasping their hands. "You haf been given up for det long tam since." The men were scattered among the families for the night, honoured guests of Charette.

"Plaintee tam we wish ourself back on ole San Loui'," said Cruzatte to his admiring countrymen.

To their surprise Lewis and Clark found new settlements all the way down from Charette. September 21, firing a tremendous salute from the old stone tower behind the huts, all St. Charles paid tribute to the Homeric heroes who had wandered farther than Ulysses and slain more monsters than Hercules.

Just above the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers loomed the fresh mud chimneys of the new log Fort Bellefontaine, Colonel Thomas Hunt in command, and Dr. Saugrain, surgeon, appointed by Jefferson.

The Colonel's pretty little daughter, Abby Hunt, looked up in admiration at Lewis and Clark, and followed all day these "Indian white men" from the north. Forty years after she told the story of that arrival. "They wore dresses of deerskin, fringed and worked with porcupine quills, something between a military undress frock coat and an Indian shirt, with leggings and moccasins, three-cornered cocked hats and long beards."

Standing between the centuries in that log fort on the Missouri, pretty little Abby Hunt herself was destined to become historic, as the wife of Colonel Snelling and the mother of the first white child born in Minnesota.

After an early breakfast with Colonel Hunt, the expedition set out for the last stretch homeward. They rounded out of the Missouri into the Mississippi, and pulled up to St. Louis at noon, Tuesday, September 23, 1806, after an absence of nearly two years and a half.

XXVIII THE OLD STONE FORTS OF ST. LOUIS

It was noon when Lewis and Clark sighted the old stone forts of the Spanish time. Never had that frontier site appeared so noble, rising on a vast terrace from the rock-bound river.

As the white walls burst on their view, with simultaneous movement every man levelled his rifle. The Captains smiled and gave the signal,—the roar of thirty rifles awoke the echoes from the rocks.

Running down the stony path to the river came the whole of St. Louis,—eager, meagre, little Frenchmen, tanned and sallow and quick of gait, smaller than the Americans, but graceful and gay, with a heartfelt welcome; black-eyed French women in camasaks and kerchiefs, dropping their trowels in their neat little gardens where they had been delving among the hollyhocks; gay little French children in red petticoats; and here and there a Kentuckian, lank and lean, eager,—all tripping and skipping down to the water's edge.

Elbowing his way among them came Monsieur Auguste Chouteau, the most noted man in St. Louis. Pierre, his brother, courtly, well-dressed, eminently social, came also; and even Madame, their mother, did not disdain to come down to welcome her friends, Les Américains.

It was like the return of a fur brigade, with shouts of laughter and genuine rejoicing.

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! eet ees Leewes an' Clark whom ve haf mournt as det in dose Rock Mountain. What good word mought dey bring from te fur countree."

With characteristic abandon the emotional little Frenchmen flung their arms around the stately forms of Lewis and Clark, and more than one pretty girl that day printed a kiss on their bearded lips.

"Major Christy,—well, I declare!" An old Wayne's army comrade grasped Captain Clark by the hand. What memories that grasp aroused! William Christy, one of his brother officers, ready not more than a dozen years ago to aid in capturing this same San Luis de Ilinoa!

"I have moved to this town. I have a tavern. Send your baggage right up!" And forthwith a creaking charette came lumbering down the rocky way.

"Take a room at my house." Pierre Chouteau grasped the hands of both Captains at once. And to Chouteau's they went.

"But first we must send word of our safe arrival to the President," said Lewis, feeling unconsciously for certain papers that had slept next his heart for many a day.

"Te post haf departed from San Loui'," remarked a bystander.

"Departed? It must be delayed. Here, Drouillard, hurry with this note to Mr. Hay at Cahokia and bid him hold the mail until to-morrow noon."

Drouillard, with his old friend Pascal Cerré, the son of Gabriel, set off at once across the Mississippi. The wharf was lined with flatboats loaded with salt for 'Kasky and furs for New Orleans.

Once a month a one-horse mail arrived at Cahokia. Formerly St. Louis went over there for mail,—St. Louis was only a village near Cahokia then; but already Les Américains were turning things upside down.

"We haf a post office now. San Loui' haf grown."

Every one said that. To eyes that had seen nothing more stately than Fort Mandan or Clatsop, St. Louis had taken on metropolitan airs. In the old fort where lately lounged the Spanish governor, peering anxiously across the dividing waters, and whence had lately marched the Spanish garrison, American courts of justice were in session. Out of the old Spanish martello tower on the hill, a few Indian prisoners looked down on the animated street below.

With the post office and the court house had come the American school, and already vivacious French children were claiming as their own, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington.

Just opposite the Chouteau mansion was the old Spanish Government House, the house where George Rogers Clark had met and loved the dazzling Donna.

Aaron Burr had lately been there, feted by the people, plotting treason with Wilkinson in the Government House itself; and now his disorganised followers, young men of birth and education from Atlantic cities, stranded in St. Louis, were to become the pioneer schoolmasters of Upper Louisiana.

New houses were rising on every hand. In the good old French days, goods at fabulous prices were kept in boxes. Did Madame or Mademoiselle wish anything, it must be unpacked as from a trunk. Once a year goods arrived. Sugar, gunpowder, blankets, spices, knives, hatchets, and kitchen-ware, pell-mell, all together, were coming out now onto shelves erected by the thrifty Americans. Already new stores stood side by side with the old French mansions.

"Alas! te good old quiet times are gone," sighed the French habitants, wiping a tear with the blue bandana.

And while they looked askance at the tall Americans, elephantine horses, and Conestoga waggons, that kept crossing the river, the prices of the little two-acre farms of the Frenchmen went up, until in a few years the old French settlers were the nabobs of the land.

Already two ferry lines were transporting a never-ending line through this new gateway to the wider West. Land-mad settlers were flocking into "Jefferson's Purchase," grubbing out hazel roots, splitting rails, making fences, building barns and bridges. Men whose sole wealth consisted in an auger, a handsaw, and a gun, were pushing into the prairies and the forests. Long-bearded, dressed in buckskin, with a knife at his belt and a rifle at his back, the forest-ranging backwoodsman was over-running Louisiana.

"Why do you live so isolated?" the stranger would ask.

"I never wish to hear the bark of a neighbour's dog. When you hear the sound of a neighbour's gun it is time to move away."

Thus, solitary and apart, the American frontiersman took up Missouri.

Strolling along the Rue Royale, followed by admiring crowds, Lewis and Clark found themselves already at the Pierre Chouteau mansion, rising like an old-world chateau amid the lesser St. Louis. Up the stone steps, within the demi-fortress, there were glimpses of fur warehouses, stables, slaves' quarters, occupying a block,—practically a fort within the city.

Other guests were there before them,—Charles Gratiot, who had visited the Clarks in Virginia, and John P. Cabanné, who was to wed Gratiot's daughter, Julia. On one of those flatboats crowding the wharf that morning came happy Pierre Menard, the most illustrious citizen of Kaskaskia, with his bride of a day, Angelique Saucier. Pierre Menard's nephew, Michel Menard, was shortly to leave for Texas, to become an Indian trader and founder of the city of Galveston.

At the board, too, sat Pierre Chouteau, the younger, just returned from a trip up the Mississippi with Julien Dubuque, where he had helped to start Dubuque and open the lead mines.

Out of the wild summer grape the old inhabitants of St. Louis had long fabricated their choicest Burgundy. But of late the Chouteaus had begun to import their wine from France, along with ebony chairs, claw-footed tables, and other luxuries, the first in this Mississippi wild. For never had the fur-trade been so prosperous.

There was laughter and clinking of glasses, and questions of lands beyond the Yellowstone. Out of that hour arose schemes for a trapper's conquest along the trail on which ten future States were strung.

"The mouth of the Yellowstone commands the rich fur-trade of the Rocky mountains," said Captain Clark. Captain Lewis dwelt on the Three Forks as a strategic point for a fort. No one there listened with more breathless intent than the dark-haired boy, the young Chouteau, who was destined to become the greatest financier of the West, a king of the fur trade, first rival and then partner of John Jacob Astor.

No wonder the home-coming of Lewis and Clark was the signal for enterprises such as this country had never yet seen. They had penetrated a realm whose monarch was the grizzly bear, whose queen was the beaver, whose armies were Indian tribes and the buffalo.

Gallic love of gaiety and amusement found in this return ample opportunity for the indulgence of hospitable dancing and feasting. Every door was open. Every house, from Chouteau's down, had its guest out of the gallant thirty-one.

Hero-worship was at its height. Hero-worship is characteristic of youthful, progressive peoples. Whole nations strive to emulate ideals. The moment that ceases, ossification begins.

Here the ideals were Lewis and Clark. They had been west; their men had been west. They, who had traced the Missouri to its cradle in the mountains, who had smoked the calumet with remotest tribes, who had carried the flag to the distant Pacific, became the lions of St. Louis.

Such spontaneous welcome made a delightful impression upon the hearts of the young Captains, and they felt a strong inclination to make the city their permanent home.

The galleries of the little inns of St. Louis were filled with Frenchmen, smoking and telling stories all day long. Nothing hurried, nothing worried them; the rise of the river, the return of a brigade, alone broke the long summer day of content.

But here was something new.

Even York, addicted to romance, told Munchausen tales of thrilling incidents that never failed of an appreciative audience. Trappers, flat-boatmen, frontiersmen, and Frenchmen loved to spin long yarns at the Green Tree Inn, but York could outdo them all. He had been to the ocean, had seen the great whale and sturgeon that put all inland fish stories far into the shade.

Petrie, Auguste Chouteau's old negro, who came with him as a boy and grew old and thought he owned Auguste Chouteau,—Petrie, who always said, "Me and the Colonel," met in York for the first time one greater than himself.

Immediately upon their return Lewis and Clark had repaired to the barber and tailor, and soon bore little resemblance to the tawny frontiersmen in fringed hunting-shirts and beards that had so lately issued from the wilderness.

In the upper story of the Chouteau mansion, the Captains regarded with awe the high four-poster with its cushiony, billowy feather-bed.

"This is too luxurious! York, bring my robe and bear-skin."

Lewis and Clark could not sleep in beds that night. They heard the watch call and saw the glimmer of campfires in their dreams. The grandeur of the mountains was upon them, cold and white and crowned with stars, the vastness of the prairie and the dashing of ocean, the roar of waterfalls, the hum of insects, and the bellowing of buffalo.

They knew now the Missouri like the face of a friend; they had stemmed its muddy mouth, had evaded its shifting sandbanks, had watched its impetuous falls that should one day whirl a thousand wheels. Up windings green as paradise they had drunk of its crystal sources in the mountains.

They had seen it when the mountains cast their shadows around the campfires, and in the blaze of noon when the quick tempest beat it into ink. They had seen it white in Mandan winter, the icy trail of brave and buffalo; and they had seen it crimson, when far-off peaks were tipped with amethystine gold.

In the vast and populous solitude of nature they had followed the same Missouri spreading away into the beaver-meadows of the Madison, the Jefferson, and the Gallatin, and had written their journals on hillsides where the windflower and the larkspur grew wild on Montana hills.

An instinct, a relic, an inheritance of long ago was upon them, when their ancestors roved the earth untrammelled by cities and civilisation, when the rock was man's pillow and the cave his home, when the arrow in his strong hand brought the fruits of the chase, when garments of skin clad his limbs, and God spoke to the white savage under the old Phœnician stars.

In their dreams they felt the rain and wind beat on their leather tent. Sacajawea's baby cried, Spring nodded with the rosy clarkia, screamed with Clark's crow, and tapped with Lewis's woodpecker.

"Rat-tat-tat!" Was that the woodpecker? No, some one was knocking at the door of their bed chamber. And no one else than Pierre Chouteau himself.

"Drouillard is back from Cahokia ready to carry your post. The rider waits."

This was the world again. It was morning. Throwing off robes and bear-skins, and rising from the hardwood floor where they had voluntarily camped that night, both Captains looked at the tables strewn with letters, where until past midnight they had sat the night before.

There lay Clark's letter to his brother, George Rogers, and there, also, was the first rough draft of Lewis's letter to the President, in a hand as fine and even as copperplate, but interlined, and blotted with erasures.

In the soft, warm St. Louis morning, with Mississippi breezes rustling the curtain, after a hurried breakfast both set to work to complete the letters.

For a time nothing was heard but the scratching of quill pens, as each made clean copies of their letters for transmission to the far-off centuries. But no centuries troubled then; to-day,—to-day, was uppermost.

York stuck in his head, hat in hand. "Massah Clahk, Drewyer say he hab jus' time, sah."

"Well, sir, tell Drouillard the whole United States mail service can wait on us to-day. We are writing to the President."

Before ten o'clock Drouillard was off to Cahokia with messages that gave to the nation at large its first intimation that the Pacific expedition was a consummated fact.

XXIX TO WASHINGTON

There were hurried days at St. Louis, a village that knew not haste before. The skins were sunned and stored in the rooms of Cadet Chouteau. Boxes of specimens were packed for the Government. Captain Lewis opened his trunk and found his papers all wet. The hermetically sealed tin cases that held the precious journals alone had saved these from destruction.

The Captains had their hands full. The restless men must be paid and discharged. Nine of the adventurers within a week after the return to St. Louis sold their prospective land claims for a pittance. Seven of these claims were bought by their fellow soldiers; Sergeant John Ordway took several of the men and settled on the site of the present city of New Madrid.

Robert Frazer received two hundred and fifty dollars for his claim, and prepared to publish his travels,—a volume that never saw the light. In addition to land grants, the men received double pay amounting altogether to eleven thousand dollars.

A grand dinner, given by St. Louis, a ball and farewell, and the Captains were on the way with their Mandan chief, Big White, and his Indians, and Gass, Shannon, Ordway, Pryor, and Bratton.

"The route by which I propose travelling to Washington is by way of Cahokia, Vincennes, Louisville, the Crab Orchard, Fincastle, Staunton, and Charlottesville," Captain Lewis had written in that letter to Jefferson. "Any letters directed to me at Louisville will most probably meet me at that place."

With well-filled saddle-bags, the returning heroes crossed to Cahokia and set out across Illinois in the Indian summer of 1806.

Governor Harrison was at Vincennes, and Vigo, and a hundred others to welcome.

"Hurrah for old Kentucky!" cried Clark, as he caught sight of its limestone shores. On many a smiling hilltop, the log cabin had expanded into a baronial country seat, with waxed floors and pianos. Already the stables were full of horses, the halls were full of music.

Clark, Lewis, and Big White climbed the cliff to the Point of Rock. Who but chiefs should visit there?

With newspapers around him, sat George Rogers Clark, following the career of Napoleon. That calm and splendid eye kindled at sight of his brother. His locks had grown longer, his eye a deeper black under the shaggy brows, but the Revolutionary hero shone in every lineament as he took the hands of the two explorers.

With the dashing waters at their feet, upon the lonely Point of Rock, above the Falls of the Ohio, William Clark stopped first to greet his brother from the great expedition. Painters may find a theme here, and future romancers a page in drama.

Without delay, taking his rusty three-cornered chapeau from its peg, and donning his faded uniform, the conqueror of Illinois accompanied the explorers to Locust Grove, ablaze that night with welcome.

Lucy, Fanny, Edmund were there; and Jonathan from Mulberry Hill; Major Croghan, the courtly host of old; and the lad, George Croghan, now in his fifteenth year. All too quickly fled the hours; the hickory flamed and the brass andirons shone not brighter than the happy faces.

Spread around for exhibition were Mandan robes, fleeces of the mountain goat, Clatsop hats, buffalo horns, and Indian baskets, Captain Clark's "tiger-cat coat," Indian curios, and skins of grizzly bears,—each article suggestive of adventure surpassing Marco Polo or the Arabian nights. Another huge box, filled with bones for the President, had been left with George Rogers Clark at the Point of Rock.

Louisville received the explorers with bonfires and cannonry. A grand ball was given in their honour, in which the Indians, especially, shone in medals and plumage.

The next day there was a sad visit to Mill Creek, where lamenting parents received the last token and listened to the final word concerning their beloved son, Sergeant Charles Floyd.

A cold wind and a light fall of snow warned them no time must be lost in crossing the Kentucky mountains; but encumbered with the Indian retinue they made slow progress along that atrocious road, on which the followers of Boone had "sometimes paused to pray and sometimes stopped to swear."

A few days beyond Cumberland Gap, Clark's heart beat a tattoo; they had come to Fincastle! Among its overhanging vines and trees, the Hancock mansion was in holiday attire,—Harriet Kennerly had just been married to Dr. Radford of Fincastle.

Colonel Hancock had been proud to entertain George Rogers Clark, still more was he now delighted with the visit of the famous explorers.

"La!" exclaimed Black Granny at the announcement of Captain Clark. "Miss Judy?" Black Granny had nursed Miss Judy from the cradle.

Sedately Miss Judy came down the long staircase,—not the child that Clark remembered, but a woman, petite, serious. The chestnut brown curls with a glint of gold were caught with a high back comb, and a sweeping gown had replaced the short petticoats that lately tripped over the foothills of the Blue Ridge.

"My pretty cousin going to marry that ugly man?" exclaimed Harriet, when she heard of the early engagement.

There was nothing effeminate about Clark, nor artificial. His features were rugged almost to plainness; his head was high from the ear to the top, a large brain chamber.

"Absolutely beautiful," said Judy to herself, associating those bronzed features with endless winds that blew on far-off mountains.

Behind the respectable old Hancock silver, Judy's mother turned the tea and talked. Turning up his laced sleeves to carve the mutton, Colonel Hancock asked a thousand questions regarding that wonderful journey.

"We passed the winter on the Pacific, then crossed the mountains, and my division came down the Yellowstone," Clark was saying. "By the way, Judy, I have named a river for you,—the Judith."

A peal of laughter rang through the dining-room.

"Judith! Judith, did you say? Why, Captain Clark, my name is Julia."

Clark was confounded. He almost feared Judy was making fun of him.

"Is it, really, now? I always supposed Judy stood for Judith."

Again rang out the infectious peal, in which Clark himself joined; but to this day rolls the river Judith in Montana, named for Clark's mountain maid of Fincastle.

"That I should live to see you back from the Pacific!" was Aunt Molly's greeting at "The Farm," at Charlottesville. "I reckoned the cannibal savages would eat you. We looked for nothing less than the fate of Captain Cook."

But Maria, whose eyes had haunted Lewis in many a long Montana day, seemed strangely shy and silent. In fact, she had another lover, perhaps a dearer one.

Uncle Nicholas was sick. He was growing old, but still directed the negroes of a plantation that extended from Charlottesville to the Fluvanna.

It was sunset when Captain Lewis reached the home at Locust Hill, and was folded to his mother's bosom. With daily prayer had Lucy Meriwether followed her boy across the Rocky Mountains.

Meriwether's little pet sister, Mary Marks, had blossomed into a bewitching rose.

"Here is a letter from the President."

Captain Lewis read his first message from Jefferson in more than two years and a half.

Turning to Big White, the chief, who at every step had gazed with amazement at the white man's country,—

"The President says 'Tell my friend of Mandan that I have already opened my arms to receive him."

"Ugh! Ugh!" commented Big White, with visions of barbaric splendour in his untutored brain.

That afternoon the entire party rode over to Monticello to show the chief the President's Indian hall, where all their gifts and tokens had been arranged for display. The next day, by Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Alexandria, the party set out for the national capital. Every step of the way was a triumphal progress.

XXX THE PLAUDITS OF A NATION

It was well into January before both Captains reached Washington. Workmen were still building at the Capitol, rearing a home for Congress. Tools of carpentry and masonry covered the windy lawn where Jefferson rode daily, superintending as on his own Virginia plantation.

Never had Captain Lewis seen his old friend, the President, so moved as when black Ben, the valet, with stentorian call announced, "Captains Mehwether Lewis and William Clahk!"

In silk stockings and pumps they stood in the Blue Room. At sight of that well-known figure in blue coat faced with yellow, red plush waistcoat, and green velveteen breeches, Meriwether Lewis bounded as a boy toward his old friend.

The gray-haired president visibly trembled as he strained the two sons of his country to his heart. Tears gushed from his eyes, "The suspense has been awful." Then pausing, with difficulty he controlled his emotion. "But the hopes, the dreams, the ambitions of twenty years are now vindicated, and you are safe, boys, you are safe. I felt that if you were lost the country would hold me responsible."

If others had asked questions about the route, Jefferson now overwhelmed them with an avalanche, put with the keenness of a scholar and the penetration of a scientist. For with the possible exception of Franklin, Thomas Jefferson was the most learned man of his time.

Into the President's hands Lewis placed the precious journals, obtained at such a cost in toil and travel. Each pocket volume, morocco-bound, had as soon as filled been cemented in a separate tin case to prevent injury by wetting. But now Lewis had slipped the cases off and displayed them neat and fresh as on the day of writing.

On rocking boats, on saddle pommels, and after dark by the flickering campfire, had the writing been done. T's were not always crossed, nor i's dotted, as hurriedly each event was jotted down to be read and criticised after a hundred years. Written under such circumstances, and in such haste, it is not remarkable that words are misspelled and some omitted. A considerable collection of later letters gives ample evidence that both the Captains were graceful correspondents.

And the vocabularies, the precious vocabularies gathered from Council Bluffs to Clatsop, were taken by Jefferson and carefully laid away for future study.

Big White and his Indians were entertained by Jefferson and the cabinet. Dolly Madison, Mrs. Gallatin, and other ladies of the White House, manifested the liveliest interest as the tall Shahaka, six feet and ten inches, stood up before them in his best necklace of bear's claws, admiring the pretty squaws that talked to them.

"And was your father a chief, and your father's father?" Mrs. Madison inquired of Shahaka. She was always interested in families and lineage. "And what makes your hair so white?" But Shahaka had never heard of Prince Madoc.

Never had the village-capital been so gay. Dinners and balls followed in rapid succession, eulogies and poems were recited in honour of the explorers. There was even talk of changing the name of the Columbia to Lewis River.

In those days everybody went to the Capitol to hear the debates. The report of Lewis and Clark created a lively sensation. Complaints of the Louisiana Purchase ceased. From the Mississippi to the sea, the United States had virtually taken possession of the continent. Members of Congress looked at one another with dilated eyes. With lifted brow and prophetic vision the young republic pierced the future. The Mississippi, once her utmost border, was now but an inland river. Beyond it, the Great West hove in sight, with peaks of snow and the blue South Sea. The problem of the ages had been solved; Lewis and Clark had found the road to Asia.

The news fell upon Europe and America as not less than a revelation.

Congress immediately gave sixteen hundred acres of land each to the Captains, and double pay in gold and three hundred and twenty acres to each of their men, to be laid out on the west side of the Mississippi. On the third day of March, 1807, Captain Lewis was appointed Governor of Louisiana; and on March 12, Captain Clark was made Brigadier General, and Indian Agent for Louisiana.

Tall, slender, but twenty-nine, Henry Clay was in the Senate, advocating roads,—roads and canals to the West. He was planning, pleading, persuading for a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, he was appealing for the improvement of the Wilderness Road through which Boone had broken a bridle trace. His prolific imagination grasped the Chesapeake and Ohio canal and an interior connection with the Lakes.

Henry Clay—"Harry Clay" as Kentucky fondly called him—had a faculty for remembering names, faces, places. As yesterday, he recalled William Clark at Lexington.

And Clark remembered Clay, standing in an ox-waggon, with flashing eyes, hair wildly waving, and features aglow, addressing an entranced throng. The same look flashed over him now as he stepped toward the heroes of the Pacific.

"Congratulations, Governor."

"Congratulations, General."

The young men smiled at their new titles.

Another was there, not to be forgotten, strong featured, cordial, cheerful, of manly beauty and large dark eyes, endeavouring to interest Congress in his inventions,—Robert Fulton of the steamboat.

Wherever they went, a certain halo seemed to hang around these men of adventure. They were soldiers and hunters, and more. Through heat and cold, and mount and plain, four thousand miles by canoe, on foot and horseback, through forests of gigantic pines and along the banks of unknown rivers, among unheard-of tribes who had never seen a white man, they had carried the message of the President and brought back a report on the new land that is authority to this day.

"What did you find?" Eager inquirers crowded on every side to hear the traveller's tale. At Louisville, men drove in from distant plantations; at Fincastle their steps were thronged along the village walks; in Washington they were never alone.

"What did we find? Gigantic sycamores for canoes, the maple for sugar, the wild cherry and walnut for joiner's work, red and white elm for cartwrights, the osage orange for hedges impenetrable, white and black oak for ship and carpenter work, pine for countless uses, and durable cedar.

"What did we find? All sorts of plants and herbs for foods, dyes, and medicines, and pasturage unending. Boone's settlers on the Missouri frontier have farms of wheat, maize, potatoes, and little cotton fields, two acres sufficient for a family. Hemp is indigenous to the soil. Even in the Mandan land, the Indians, with implements that barely scratch the earth, have immense gardens of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes.

"What did we find? Oceans of beaver and seas of buffalo, clay fit for bricks and white clay for pottery, salt springs, saltpetre, and plaster, pipestone, and quarries of marble red and white, mines of iron, lead and coal, horses to be bought for a song, cedar, and fir trees six and eight feet in diameter, enormous salmon that block the streams."

No wonder the land was excited at the report of Lewis and Clark. All at once the unknown mysterious West stood revealed as the home of natural resources. Their travels became the Robinson Crusoe of many a boy who lived to see for himself the marvels of that trans-Mississippi.

Sergeant Gass received his pay in gold and went home to Wellsburg, West Virginia, to find his old father smoking still beside the fire. With the help of a Scotch schoolmaster Patrick published his book the next year, immortalising the name of the gallant Irish Sergeant. Then he "inlisted" again, and fought the Creeks, and in 1812 lost an eye at Lundy's Lane. Presently he married the daughter of a Judge, and lived to become a great student in his old age, and an authority on Indians and early times.

John Ordway went home to New Hampshire and married, and returned to live on his farm near New Madrid.

William Bratton tarried for a time in Kentucky, served in the War of 1812 under Harrison, and was at Tippecanoe and the Thames. He married and lived at Terre Haute, Indiana, and is buried at Waynetown.

George Gibson settled at St. Louis, and lived and died there. Nathaniel Pryor and William Werner became Indian agents under William Clark; Pryor died in 1831 among the Osages. George Drouillard went into the fur trade and was killed by the Blackfeet at the Three Forks of the Missouri. John Coalter, after adventures that will be related, settled at the town of Daniel Boone, married a squaw and died there. John Potts was killed by the Blackfeet on the river Jefferson. Sacajawea and Charboneau lived for many years among the Mandans, and their descendants are found in Dakota to this day.

Of the voyageurs who went as far as the Mandan town, Lajaunnesse accompanied Fremont across the mountains; and two others, Francis Rivet and Philip Degie, were the earliest settlers of Oregon, where they lived to a great old age, proud of the fact that they had "belonged to Lewis and Clark."