First Across the Continent | Page 5

its long journey to
the northwestward.
All over the small area of the United States then existed a deep interest
in the proposed explorations of the course and sources of the Missouri
River. The explorers were about to plunge into vast solitudes of which
white people knew less than we know now about the North Polar
country. Wild and extravagant stories of what was to be seen in those
trackless regions were circulated in the States. For example, it was said
that Lewis and Clark expected to find the mammoth of prehistoric
times still living and wandering in the Upper Missouri region; and it
was commonly reported that somewhere, a thousand miles or so up the
river, was a solid mountain of rock salt, eighty miles long and
forty-five miles wide, destitute of vegetation and glittering in the sun!
These, and other tales like these, were said to be believed and doted
upon by the great Jefferson himself. The Federalists, or "Feds," as they
were called, who hated Jefferson, pretended to believe that he had
invented some of these foolish yarns, hoping thereby to make his
Louisiana purchase more popular in the Republic.
In his last letter to Captain Lewis, which was to reach the explorers
before they started, Jefferson said: "The acquisition of the country
through which you are to pass has inspired the country generally with a
great deal of interest in your enterprise. The inquiries are perpetual as
to your progress. The Feds alone still treat it as a philosophism, and
would rejoice at its failure. Their bitterness increases with the
diminution of their numbers and despair of a resurrection. I hope you
will take care of yourself, and be a living witness of their malice and
folly." Indeed, after the explorers were lost sight of in the wilderness
which they were to traverse, many people in the States declaimed
bitterly against the folly that had sent these unfortunate men to perish
miserably in the fathomless depths of the continent. They no longer
treated it "as a philosophism," or wild prank, but as a wicked scheme to

risk life and property in a search for the mysteries of the unknown and
unknowable.
As a striking illustration of this uncertainty of the outcome of the
expedition, which exercised even the mind of Jefferson, it may be said
that in his instructions to Captain Lewis he said: "Our Consuls, Thomas
Hewes, at Batavia in Java, William Buchanan in the isles of France and
Bourbon, and John Elmslie at the Cape of Good Hope, will be able to
supply your necessities by drafts on us." All this seems strange enough
to the young reader of the present day; but this was said and done one
hundred years ago.
Chapter III
-- From the Lower to the Upper River
The party finally set sail up the Missouri River on Monday, May 21,
1804, but made only a few miles, owing to head winds. Four days later
they camped near the last white settlement on the Missouri,--La
Charrette, a little village of seven poor houses. Here lived Daniel
Boone, the famous Kentucky backwoodsman, then nearly seventy years
old, but still vigorous, erect, and strong of limb. Here and above this
place the explorers began to meet with unfamiliar Indian tribes and
names. For example, they met two canoes loaded with furs "from the
Mahar nation." The writer of the Lewis and Clark journal, upon whose
notes we rely for our story, made many slips of this sort. By "Mahars"
we must understand that the Omahas were meant. We shall come
across other such instances in which the strangers mistook the
pronunciation of Indian names. For example, Kansas was by them
misspelled as "Canseze" and "Canzan;" and there appear some thirteen
or fourteen different spellings of Sioux, of which one of the most
far-fetched is "Scouex."
The explorers were now in a country unknown to them and almost
unknown to any white man. On the thirty-first of May, a messenger
came down the Grand Osage River bringing a letter from a person who
wrote that the Indians, having been notified that the country had been

ceded to the Americans, burned the letter containing the tidings,
refusing to believe the report. The Osage Indians, through whose
territory they were now passing, were among the largest and
finest-formed red men of the West. Their name came from the river
along which they warred and hunted, but their proper title, as they
called themselves, was "the Wabashas," and from them, in later years,
we derive the familiar name of Wabash. A curious tradition of this
people, according to the journal of Lewis and Clark, is that the founder
of the nation was a snail, passing a quiet existence along the banks of
the Osage, till a high flood