One of the paragraphs in the instructions, most characteristic of Thomas Jefferson, is that in which Captain Lewis is enjoined to "bring back your party safe, even if it be with less information."

About midsummer, 1803, Lewis set out from Washington for Pittsburg. At Pittsburg he was delayed for several weeks by the delinquency of a boat-builder, but began the descent of the Ohio on the last day of August. At the several military stations along that river and the Mississippi he enlisted volunteers to the number of fourteen. The party contained, when complete, including the two captains, the sergeants, privates, interpreters, an Indian woman, Sacajawea, and Clark's negro, York, a total of thirty-two persons. Sixteen others, seven soldiers and nine voyageurs, were employed to accompany the expedition as far as the Mandan villages.

After a winter spent in camp on the American side of the Mississippi, the exploring party, on May 14, 1804, entered the Missouri and began the long ascent of the river. The undertaking was recognized as a notable one, fraught with danger and difficulty to all concerned in it, but likely to confer new honors upon the nation. The people of St. Louis and St. Charles, and groups of newly arrived immigrants from east of the river, manifested the deepest interest in the expedition, as day by day it toiled up the swift and treacherous current.

On the 25th of May they passed La Charette, a little village of seven houses, near which the celebrated pioneer Daniel Boone dwelt in his woodland home, on the very outskirts of settlement. Thenceforth the journey was entirely through the Indian country. For some days yet they occasionally met traders, bringing down boatloads of furs from the Kansas, the Platte, and the Sioux. At Council Bluff, so named by the Lewis and Clark party, a great conference was held with several Indian tribes. On the 20th of August, when passing the present site of Sioux City, the expedition sustained its only loss by death in the person of Sergeant Charles Floyd.

Moving on amid constantly shifting, yet always similar scenes a mingling of prairie, river, hill, and fringing woodthrough the country of the Sioux tribes (with one of which they had an unpleasant experience), the party at the end of October reached the villages of the Mandans, and prepared to pass the winter in camp.

Fort Mandan, as the camp was named, was simply two rows of rude blockhouses, with shed roofs rising from the inner side, and so arranged that they formed two sides of a triangle of which the third was set with strong palisades. The construction was mainly of cottonwood logs found growing along the river in the vicinity. Here the Lewis and Clark expedition spent five cold and stormy months, from November to April. In the intervals of hunting the leaders busied themselves with the preparation of the report of the journey to that point, and other matters to be sent back to the President in the spring; in gaining all possible information, from Indians and British traders, concerning the country to the north and west; in promoting friendly relations with the surrounding tribes; in building boats, and making other preparations for the forward movement toward the west.

By the 7th of April, 1805, the river was clear of ice, and on that date, all being in readiness, the keel-boat was sent down the river with ten men to carry dispatches to St. Louis. At the same time, the main party headed their eight boats up the stream. For a time all went well. On the 26th of the month they reached the mouth of the Yellowstone, and were able to learn from the natives many facts about the character of the river, its source, direction, length, and the country through which it flowed. In this region was the greatest profusion of game yet encountered, and the abundance of beaver pointed to some spot, near the junction of the two rivers, as a favorable place for a trading post.

But the establishment of trading centres was for those who should come later; the first explorers had leisure only

to note appearances, admire, prophesy, and pass on toward the sources of the great Missouri, through a "succession of curious adventures" which "wore the impression of inchantment," and made the journey, as Lewis tells us, seem sometimes more like a dream than a reality. On the 13th of June the advance party reached the Falls of the Missouri, which were passed in safety; on the 25th they arrived at the three forks; and after a month spent in ascending the turbulent Jefferson branch, they finally entered the mountains where it has its source on the 30th of August. The Shoshone Indians, parties of which were found in the vicinity, were able to supply the expedition with horses for the difficult journey to the navigable waters of the Columbia system, which they reached by following the Lolo trail to the Clearwater. It was a trying march, through dense woods, dark defiles, over numberless obstructions of rocks and fallen timber, and consumed somewhat more than three weeks.

On the 7th of October, having provided themselves once more with boats, the party began the triumphant voyage to the Pacific. Their course was from the Clearwater to the Snake, by the Snake to the main Columbia; then, past the Great Falls, the Dalles, and the Cascades to tidewater. It was the 7th of November, 1805, the explorers tell us, when, with emotions which it would be impossible to describe, they first beheld the waves of the long sought Western Ocean, "the object of all our labors, the reward of all our anxieties."

Two years had passed since the party went into winter quarters at River Du Bois, and eighteen months since they left the American frontier. Their supplies were exhausted, their clothing in tatters, and little remained of the goods brought out for trade. While plenty of indications pointed to the fact that traders frequented the mouth of the river, none were there during the winter of 1805-1806, and no opportunity offered either to return by sea or to procure fresh supplies by using Jefferson's letter of credit. The party must shift for itself as best it might. The first necessity

was shelter. This was prepared by the end of December at a spot near Young's Bay, a few miles from the present site of Astoria, and the structure there erected was called Fort Clatsop, from the neighboring tribe of Indians.

There, in the most humid section of the Oregon coast, and away from the haunts of game, they spent a most disagreeable winter. All remained in good health, however, and at last the period of imprisonment was over. Long before the snow had disappeared from the mountains crossed in the preceding autumn, the party left its camp in the hope of bettering its condition by moving inland. Written statements were distributed among the Indians, notifying traders visiting the region that the dauntless Americans had achieved the task allotted to them of crossing the continent to the Pacific. These notices would preserve a record of its work even should the party be cut off on the return journey. But no such accident befell them, and exactly six months from the time of breaking camp on the Pacific coast, on the 23d of September, 1806, the entire party entered St. Louis, having recrossed the mountains by the same general route, but making collateral explorations of considerable importance.

The Lewis and Clark expedition has passed into history. It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of the work achieved. In the first place, a practical way had been opened across the continent, which, with some modifications, long remained the great highway between the Mississippi and the Western Ocean. By traversing the main stream and branches of the Columbia, the explorers established for the government a strong claim upon the valley of the river, whose port had been discovered by an American thirteen years before. In short, Lewis and Clark, with their little band of Westerners, were the pioneers of a mighty movement, which eventually was to carry the laws and institutions of the young republic across the continent, and give our nation a frontage on the Pacific shores similar to that on the Atlantic coast.