agerly. St. Louis was happy; Detroit was glum--the fur trade had been
split in half. Great Britain had lost--the furs now went out down the
Mississippi instead of down the St. Lawrence. A world was in the
making and remaking; and over that disturbed and divided world there
still floated the three rival flags.

Five days before Christmas of 1803, the flag of France fluttered down
in the old city of New Orleans. They had dreaded the fleet of Great
Britain at New Orleans--had hoped for the fleet of France. They got a
fleet of Americans in flatboats--rude men with long rifles and
leathern garments, who came under paddle and oar, and not under sail.

Laussat was the last French commandant in the valley. De Lassus, the
Spaniard, holding onto his dignity up the Missouri River beyond St.
Louis, still clung to the sovereignty that Spain had deserted. And
across the river, in a little row of log cabins, lay the new army with
the new flag--an army of twenty-nine men, backed by twenty-five
hundred dollars of a nation's hoarded war gold!

It was a time for hope or for despair--a time for success or
failure--a time for loyalty or for treason. And that army of
twenty-nine men in buckskin altered the map of the world, the history
of a vast continent.

While Meriwether Lewis gravely went about his scientific studies, and
William Clark merrily went about his dancing with the gay St. Louis
belles, when not engaged in drilling his men beyond the river, the
winter passed. Spring came. The ice ceased to run in the river, the
geese honked northward in millions, the grass showed green betimes.

The men in Clark's encampment were almost mutinous with lust for
travel. But still the authorities had not completed their formalities;
still the flag of Spain floated over the crossbars of the gate of the
stone fortress, last stronghold of Spain in the valley of our great
river.

March passed, and April. Not until the 9th of May, in the year 1804,
were matters concluded to suit the punctilio of France and Spain
alike. Now came the assured word that the republic of the United
States intended to stand on the Louisiana purchase, Constitution or no
Constitution--that the government purposed to take over the land which
it had bought. On this point Mr. Jefferson was firm. De Lassus yielded
now.

On that May morning the soldiers of Spain manning the fortifications
of the old post stood at parade when the drums of the Americans were
heard. One company