nder Clark in Wayne's army. He had also been President
Jefferson's private secretary.

Their Party.

The young officers started on their trip accompanied by twenty-seven men
who intended to make the whole journey. Of this number one, the
interpreter and incidentally the best hunter of the party, was a
half-breed; two were French voyageurs; one was a negro servant of Clark;
nine were volunteers from Kentucky; and fourteen were regular soldiers.
All, however, except the black slave, were enlisted in the army before
starting, so that they might be kept under regular discipline. In
addition to these twenty-seven men there were seven soldiers and nine
voyageurs who started only to go to the Mandan villages on the Missouri,
where the party intended to spend the first winter. They embarked in
three large boats, abundantly supplied with arms, powder, and lead,
clothing, gifts for the Indians, and provisions.

The starting point was St. Louis, which had only just been surrendered
to the United States Government by the Spaniards, without any French
intermediaries. The explorers pushed off in May, 1804, and soon began
stemming the strong current of the muddy Missouri, to whose unknown
sources they intended to ascend. For two or three weeks they
occasionally passed farms and hamlets. The most important of the little
towns was St. Charles, where the people were all Creoles; the explorers
in their journal commented upon the good temper and vivacity of these
_habitants_, but dwelt on the shiftlessness they displayed and their
readiness to sink back towards savagery, although they were brave and
hardy enough. The next most considerable town was peopled mainly by
Americans, who had already begun to make numerous settlements in the new
land. The last squalid little village they passed claimed as one of its
occasional residents old Daniel Boone himself.

After leaving the final straggling log cabins of the settled country,
the explorers, with sails and paddles, made their way through what is
now the State of Missouri. They lived well, for their hunters killed
many deer and wild turkey and some black bear and beaver, and there was
an abundance of breeding water fowl. Here and there were Indian
encampments, but not many, for the tribes had gone westward to the great
plains of what is now Kansas to hunt the buffalo. Already buffalo and
elk were scarce in Missouri, and the party did not begin to find them in
any numbers until they rea