Chapter XVI: Book II: Into the West (7)

_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 for Congress. Tools of carpentry and masonry covered the windy lawn where Jefferson rode daily, superintending as on his own Virginia plantation.

Never had Captain Lewis seen his old friend, the President, so moved as 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 of that well-known figure in blue coat faced with yellow, red plush waistcoat, and green velveteen breeches, Meriwether Lewis bounded as a boy toward his old friend.

The gray-haired president visibly trembled as he strained the two sons of his country to his heart. Tears gushed from his eyes, "The suspense has been awful." Then pausing, with difficulty he controlled his emotion. "But the hopes, the dreams, the ambitions of twenty years are now vindicated, and you are safe, boys, you are safe. I felt that if you were lost the country would hold me responsible."

If others had asked questions about the route, Jefferson now overwhelmed them with an avalanche, put with the keenness of a scholar and the penetration of a scientist. For with the possible exception of Franklin, 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 tin case to prevent injury by wetting. But now Lewis had slipped the cases off and displayed them neat and fresh as on the day of writing.

On rocking boats, on saddle pommels, and after dark by the flickering campfire, had the writing been done. T's were not always crossed, nor i's dotted, as hurriedly each event was jotted down to be read and criticised after a hundred years. Written under such circumstances, and in such haste, it is not remarkable that words are misspelled and some omitted. A considerable collection of later letters gives ample evidence that both the Captains were graceful correspondents.

And the vocabularies, the precious vocabularies gathered from Council Bluffs to Clatsop, were taken by Jefferson and carefully laid away for future study.

Big White and his Indians were entertained by Jefferson and the cabinet. Dolly Madison, Mrs. Gallatin, and other ladies of the White House, manifested the liveliest interest as the tall Shahaka, six feet and ten inches, stood up before them in his best necklace of bear's claws, admiring the pretty squaws that talked to them.

"And was your father a chief, and your father's father?" Mrs. Madison inquired of Shahaka. She was always interested in families and lineage. "And what makes your hair so white?" But Shahaka had never heard of Prince Madoc.

Never had the village-capital been so gay. Dinners and balls followed in rapid succession, eulogies and poems were recited in honour of the explorers. There was even talk of changing the name of the Columbia to Lewis River.

In those days everybody went to the Capitol to hear the debates. The report of Lewis and Clark created a lively sensation. Complaints of the Louisiana Purchase ceased. From the Mississippi to the sea, the United States had virtually taken possession of the continent. Members of Congress looked at one another with dilated eyes. With lifted brow and prophetic vision the young republic pierced the future. The Mississippi, once her utmost border, was now but an inland river. Beyond it, the Great West hove in sight, with peaks of snow and the blue South Sea. The problem of the ages had been solved; Lewis and Clark 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 the Captains, and double pay in gold and three hundred and twenty acres to each 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 Governor of Louisiana; and on March 12, Captain Clark was made Brigadier General, 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 was appealing for the improvement of the Wilderness Road through which Boone had broken a bridle trace. His prolific imagination grasped the Chesapeake and Ohio canal and an interior connection with the Lakes.

Henry Clay--"Harry Clay" as Kentucky fondly called him--had a faculty for remembering names, faces, places. As yesterday, he recalled William Clark at Lexington.

And Clark remembered Clay, standing in an ox-waggon, with flashing eyes, hair wildly waving, and features aglow, addressing an entranced throng. The same look flashed over him now as he stepped toward the heroes 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 to interest Congress in his inventions,--Robert Fulton of the steamboat.

Wherever they went, a certain halo seemed to hang around these men of adventure. They were soldiers and hunters, and more. Through heat and cold, and mount and plain, four thousand miles by canoe, on foot and horseback, through forests of gigantic pines and along the banks of unknown rivers, among unheard-of tribes who had never seen a white man, they had carried the message of the President and brought back a report on the new land that is authority to this day.

"What did you find?" Eager inquirers crowded on every side to hear the traveller's tale. At Louisville, men drove in from distant plantations; at Fincastle their steps were thronged along the village walks; 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 for cartwrights, the osage orange for hedges impenetrable, white and black oak for ship and carpenter work, pine for countless uses, and durable cedar.

"What did we find? All sorts of plants and herbs for foods, dyes, and medicines, and pasturage unending. Boone's settlers on the Missouri frontier have farms of wheat, maize, potatoes, and little cotton fields, two acres sufficient for a family. Hemp is indigenous to the soil. Even in the Mandan land, the Indians, with implements that barely 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 for bricks and white clay for pottery, salt springs, saltpetre, and plaster, pipestone, and quarries of marble red and white, mines of iron, lead and coal, horses to be bought for a song, cedar, and fir trees six and eight feet in diameter, enormous salmon that block the streams."

No wonder the land was excited at the report of Lewis and Clark. All at once the unknown mysterious West stood revealed as the home of natural resources. Their travels became the Robinson Crusoe of many a boy 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 the next year, immortalising the name of the gallant Irish Sergeant. Then he "inlisted" again, and fought the Creeks, and in 1812 lost an eye at Lundy's Lane. Presently he married the daughter of a Judge, and lived to become a great student in his old age, and an authority on Indians and early times.

John Ordway went home to New Hampshire and married, and returned to live on his farm near New Madrid.

William Bratton tarried for a time in Kentucky, served in the War of 1812 under Harrison, and was at Tippecanoe and the Thames. He married and 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 William Clark; Pryor died in 1831 among the Osages. George Drouillard went into the fur trade and was killed by the Blackfeet at the Three Forks of 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, and their descendants are found in Dakota to this day.

Of the voyageurs who went as far as the Mandan town, Lajaunnesse accompanied Fremont across the mountains; and two others, Francis Rivet and Philip Degie, were the earliest settlers of Oregon, where they lived to a great old age, proud of the fact that they had "belonged to Lewis and Clark."

Book III

_THE RED HEAD CHIEF_