recruits and make arrangements
for a private expedition against Mexico," especially in case of war
with Spain.

It was the middle of September when, true to his promise, Burr
appeared at St. Louis, in Wilkinson's quarters, to unfold the tale of
his triumph in New Orleans. In the course of his animated narrative,
he said:

"There is an infinite difference between floating down to New Orleans
in your delightful barge, and jogging homeward a thousand miles on
horseback. That interminable stretch of dreary wilderness from Natchez
to Nashville, along the Indian trail, over sandy wastes, through pine
woods, was intolerable. I was glad enough to reach Tennessee and old
Kentucky. The people of Frankfort treated me very handsomely, as did
those of Lexington. I paid my respects to the local idol, the young
Virginia orator and rising lawyer, Henry Clay. That man is a
prodigy--he will make his mark. I wish he were hand in hand with us,
like Jackson, and ready to embark his fortune at our prompting."

"So do I. Clay is a rising power, notwithstanding his conceit. He will
make a stir in Congress some of these days."

"That he will," said Burr, and proceeded with his story, at the close
of which he exclaimed,

"I wish you could attend one of the meetings of the Mexican Society in
New Orleans. Its object is to discuss means of emancipating Mexico.
You should hear, as I have heard, the outspoken discontents of the
creole population. They adore the institution of African slavery. They
hate New England. They will not buy even a Yankee clock if it is
adorned with an image of the Yankee Goddess of Liberty. But they are
_mine_, every mother's son of them, and what is more important, every
father's daughter of them. I took the city by storm, and the outlying
provinces belong to us. We have a people and, virtually, an army. The
moral conquest is complete. When the hour strikes for extending the
borders of our conceded realm, you are the chosen Caesar."

"Can we depend on David Clarke's co-operation?"

"Why not? His interests are bound up in ours. We have a host of stanch
adherents, in all parts of the country and on the high sea, and in
Europe, soldiers, statesmen, capitalists. I need not name them to you.
All these are to be kept in mind and treated with due consideration.
Our enterprise is in its preliminary stage. The shrewd work of
enlisting recruits must be intrusted to carefully selected captains. I
have the ways and means clear