XXX
_THE PLAUDITS OF A NATION_
It was well into January before both Captains reached Washington.Workmen were still building at the Capitol, rearing a home forCongress. Tools of carpentry and masonry covered the windy lawn whereJefferson rode daily, superintending as on his own Virginiaplantation.
Never had Captain Lewis seen his old friend, the President, so movedas when black Ben, the valet, with stentorian call announced,"Captains Mehwether Lewis and William Clahk!"
In silk stockings and pumps they stood in the Blue Room. At sight ofthat well-known figure in blue coat faced with yellow, red plushwaistcoat, and green velveteen breeches, Meriwether Lewis bounded as aboy toward his old friend.
The gray-haired president visibly trembled as he strained the two sonsof his country to his heart. Tears gushed from his eyes, "The suspensehas been awful." Then pausing, with difficulty he controlled hisemotion. "But the hopes, the dreams, the ambitions of twenty years arenow vindicated, and you are safe, boys, you are safe. I felt that ifyou were lost the country would hold me responsible."
If others had asked questions about the route, Jefferson nowoverwhelmed them with an avalanche, put with the keenness of a scholarand the penetration of a scientist. For with the possible exception ofFranklin, Thomas Jefferson was the most learned man of his time.
Into the President's hands Lewis placed the precious journals,obtained at such a cost in toil and travel. Each pocket volume,morocco-bound, had as soon as filled been cemented in a separate tincase to prevent injury by wetting. But now Lewis had slipped the casesoff and displayed them neat and fresh as on the day of writing.
On rocking boats, on saddle pommels, and after dark by the flickeringcampfire, had the writing been done. T's were not always crossed, nori's dotted, as hurriedly each event was jotted down to be read andcriticised after a hundred years. Written under such circumstances,and in such haste, it is not remarkable that words are misspelled andsome omitted. A considerable collection of later letters gives ampleevidence that both the Captains were graceful correspondents.
And the vocabularies, the precious vocabularies gathered from CouncilBluffs to Clatsop, were taken by Jefferson and carefully laid away forfuture study.
Big White and his Indians were entertained by Jefferson and thecabinet. Dolly Madison, Mrs. Gallatin, and other ladies of the WhiteHouse, manifested the liveliest interest as the tall Shahaka, six feetand ten inches, stood up before them in his best necklace of bear'sclaws, admiring the pretty squaws that talked to them.
"And was your father a chief, and your father's father?" Mrs. Madisoninquired of Shahaka. She was always interested in families andlineage. "And what makes your hair so white?" But Shahaka had neverheard of Prince Madoc.
Never had the village-capital been so gay. Dinners and balls followedin rapid succession, eulogies and poems were recited in honour of theexplorers. There was even talk of changing the name of the Columbia toLewis River.
In those days everybody went to the Capitol to hear the debates. Thereport of Lewis and Clark created a lively sensation. Complaints ofthe Louisiana Purchase ceased. From the Mississippi to the sea, theUnited States had virtually taken possession of the continent.Members of Congress looked at one another with dilated eyes. Withlifted brow and prophetic vision the young republic pierced thefuture. The Mississippi, once her utmost border, was now but an inlandriver. Beyond it, the Great West hove in sight, with peaks of snow andthe blue South Sea. The problem of the ages had been solved; Lewis andClark had found the road to Asia.
The news fell upon Europe and America as not less than a revelation.
Congress immediately gave sixteen hundred acres of land each to theCaptains, and double pay in gold and three hundred and twenty acres toeach of their men, to be laid out on the west side of the Mississippi.On the third day of March, 1807, Captain Lewis was appointed Governorof Louisiana; and on March 12, Captain Clark was made BrigadierGeneral, and Indian Agent for Louisiana.
Tall, slender, but twenty-nine, Henry Clay was in the Senate,advocating roads,--roads and canals to the West. He was planning,pleading, persuading for a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, he wasappealing for the improvement of the Wilderness Road through whichBoone had broken a bridle trace. His prolific imagination grasped theChesapeake and Ohio canal and an interior connection with the Lakes.
Henry Clay--"Harry Clay" as Kentucky fondly called him--had a facultyfor remembering names, faces, places. As yesterday, he recalledWilliam Clark at Lexington.
And Clark remembered Clay, standing in an ox-waggon, with flashingeyes, hair wildly waving, and features aglow, addressing an entrancedthrong. The same look flashed over him now as he stepped toward theheroes of the Pacific.
"Congratulations, Governor."
"Congratulations, General."
The young men smiled at their new titles.
Another was there, not to be forgotten, strong featured, cordial,cheerful, of manly beauty and large dark eyes, endeavouring tointerest Congress in his inventions,--Robert Fulton of the steamboat.
Wherever they went, a certain halo seemed to hang around these men ofadventure. They were soldiers and hunters, and more. Through heat andcold, and mount and plain, four thousand miles by canoe, on foot andhorseback, through forests of gigantic pines and along the banks ofunknown rivers, among unheard-of tribes who had never seen a whiteman, they had carried the message of the President and brought back areport on the new land that is authority to this day.
"What did you find?" Eager inquirers crowded on every side to hear thetraveller's tale. At Louisville, men drove in from distantplantations; at Fincastle their steps were thronged along the villagewalks; in Washington they were never alone.
"What did we find? Gigantic sycamores for canoes, the maple for sugar,the wild cherry and walnut for joiner's work, red and white elm forcartwrights, the osage orange for hedges impenetrable, white and blackoak for ship and carpenter work, pine for countless uses, and durablecedar.
"What did we find? All sorts of plants and herbs for foods, dyes, andmedicines, and pasturage unending. Boone's settlers on the Missourifrontier have farms of wheat, maize, potatoes, and little cottonfields, two acres sufficient for a family. Hemp is indigenous to thesoil. Even in the Mandan land, the Indians, with implements thatbarely scratch the earth, have immense gardens of corn, beans,pumpkins, and squashes.
"What did we find? Oceans of beaver and seas of buffalo, clay fit forbricks and white clay for pottery, salt springs, saltpetre, andplaster, pipestone, and quarries of marble red and white, mines ofiron, lead and coal, horses to be bought for a song, cedar, and firtrees six and eight feet in diameter, enormous salmon that block thestreams."
No wonder the land was excited at the report of Lewis and Clark. Allat once the unknown mysterious West stood revealed as the home ofnatural resources. Their travels became the Robinson Crusoe of many aboy who lived to see for himself the marvels of that trans-Mississippi.
* * * * *
Sergeant Gass received his pay in gold and went home to Wellsburg,West Virginia, to find his old father smoking still beside the fire.With the help of a Scotch schoolmaster Patrick published his book thenext year, immortalising the name of the gallant Irish Sergeant. Thenhe "inlisted" again, and fought the Creeks, and in 1812 lost an eye atLundy's Lane. Presently he married the daughter of a Judge, and livedto become a great student in his old age, and an authority on Indiansand early times.
John Ordway went home to New Hampshire and married, and returned tolive on his farm near New Madrid.
William Bratton tarried for a time in Kentucky, served in the War of1812 under Harrison, and was at Tippecanoe and the Thames. He marriedand lived at Terre Haute, Indiana, and is buried at Waynetown.
George Gibson settled at St. Louis, and lived and died there.Nathaniel Pryor and William Werner became Indian agents under WilliamClark; Pryor died in 1831 among the Osages. George Drouillard wentinto the fur trade and was killed by the Blackfeet at
the Three Forksof the Missouri. John Coalter, after adventures that will be related,settled at the town of Daniel Boone, married a squaw and died there.John Potts was killed by the Blackfeet on the river Jefferson.Sacajawea and Charboneau lived for many years among the Mandans, andtheir descendants are found in Dakota to this day.
Of the voyageurs who went as far as the Mandan town, Lajaunnesseaccompanied Fremont across the mountains; and two others, FrancisRivet and Philip Degie, were the earliest settlers of Oregon, wherethey lived to a great old age, proud of the fact that they had"belonged to Lewis and Clark."
Book III
_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_
Book III
_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_