river flowing into the Pacific. What lay between this
river and that other great river on the eastern side of the
mountains--the Missouri? Jefferson had arranged with John Ledyard of
Connecticut, who had been with Captain Cook on the Pacific, to explore
the northwest coast of America by crossing Russia overland; but Russia
had similar designs for herself, and stopped Ledyard on the way. In 1803
President Jefferson asked Congress for an appropriation to explore the
Northwest by way of the Missouri. Now that the wealth of the West is
beyond the estimate of any figure, it seems almost inconceivable that
there were people little-minded enough to haggle over the price paid for
Louisiana--$15,000,000--and to object to the appropriation required for
its exploration--$2500; but fortunately the world goes ahead in spite of
hagglers.

May of 1804 saw Captain Meriwether Lewis, formerly secretary to President
Jefferson, and Captain William Clark of Virginia launch out from Wood
River opposite St. Louis, where they had kept their men encamped all
winter on the east side of the Mississippi, waiting until the formal
transfer of Louisiana for the long journey of exploration to the sources
of the Missouri and the Columbia. Their escort consisted of twenty
soldiers, eleven _voyageurs_, and nine frontiersmen. The main craft was
a keel boat fifty-five feet long, of light draft, with square-rigged sail
and twenty-two oars, and tow-line fastened to the mast pole to track the
boat upstream through rapids. An American flag floated from the prow,
and behind the flag the universal types of progress everywhere--goods for
trade and a swivel-gun. Horses were led alongshore for hunting, and two
pirogues--sharp at prow, broad at stern, like a flat-iron or a
turtle--glided to the fore of the keel boat.

[Illustration: Captain Meriwether Lewis.]

The Missouri was at flood tide, turbid with crumbling clay banks and
great trees torn out by the roots, from which keel boat and pirogues
sheered safely off. For the first time in history the Missouri resounded
to the Fourth of July guns; and round camp-fire the men danced to the
strains of a _voyageur's_ fiddle. Usually, among forty men is one
traitor, and Liberte must desert on pretence of running back for a knife;
but perhaps the fellow took fright from the wild yarns told by the
lonely-eyed, shaggy-browed, ragged trappers who came floating down the
Platte, down the Osage, down the Missouri, wit