course, assuring them in our name, that any aids they may furnish you, shall be honorably repaid, and on demand. 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 draughts.

on us.

"Should you find it safe to return by the way you go, after sending two of your party round by sea, or with your whole party, if no conveyance by sea can be found, do so; making such observations on your return, as may serve to supply, correct, or confirm those made on your outward journey.

"On re-entering the United States and reaching a place of safety, discharge any of your attendants who may desire and deserve it, procuring for them immediate payment of all arrears of pay and clothing which may have incurred since their departure, and assure them that they shall be recommended to the liberality of the legislature for the grant of a soldier's portion of land each, as proposed in my message to Congress; and repair yourself with your papers to the seat of government.

"To provide in the accident of your death, against anarchy, dispersion and the consequent danger to your party, and total failure of the enterprise, you are hereby authorized, by any instrument signed and written in your own hand, to name the person among them who shall succeed to the command on your decease, and by like instruments to change the nomination from time to time as further experience of the characters accompanying you shall point out superior fitness; and all the powers and authorities given to yourself are, in the event of your death, transferred to, and vested in the successor so named, with further power to him, and his successors in like manner, to name each his successor, who, on the death of his predecessor, shall be invested with all the powers and authorities given to yourself.

"Given under my hand at the city of Washington, this 20th day of June, 1803.

"THOMAS JEFFERSON, President of the U. States of America."

While these things were going on here, the country of Louis

iana, lately ceded by Spain to France, had been the subject of negotiation between us and this last power; and had actually been transferred to us by treaties executed at Paris on the 30th of April. This information, received about the 1st day of July, increased infinitely the interest we felt in the expedition, and lessened the apprehensions of interruption from other powers. Everything in this quarter being now prepared, Captain Lewis left Washington on the 5th of July, 1803, and proceeded to Pittsburg, where other articles had been ordered to be provided for him. The men, too, were to be selected from the military stations on the Ohio. Delays of preparation, difficulties of navigation down the Ohio, and other untoward obstructions, retarded his arrival at Cahokia until the season was so far advanced as to render it prudent to suspend his entering the Missouri before the ice should break up in the succeeding spring. From this time his journal, now published, will give the history of his journey to and from the Pacific ocean, until his return to St. Louis on the 23d of September, 1806. Never did a similar event excite more joy through the United States.

The humblest of its citizens had taken a lively interest in the issue of this journey, and looked forward with impatience for the information it would furnish. Their anxieties, too, for the safety of the corps had been kept in a state of excitement by lugubrious rumors, circulated from time to time on uncertain authorities, and uncontradicted by letters or other direct information from the time they had left the Mandan towns on their ascent up the river in April of the preceding year, 1805, until their actual return to St. Louis.

It was the middle of Feb. 1807, before Capt. Lewis with his companion Clarke reached the city of Washington, where Congress was then in session. That body granted to the two chiefs and their followers, the donation of lands which they had been encouraged to expect in reward of their toils and dangers. Capt. Lewis was soon after appointed Governor of Louisiana, and Capt. Clarke a General of its militia, and agent of the United States for Indian affairs in that department.

A considerable time intervened before the Governor's arrival

at St. Louis. He found the territory distracted by feuds and contentions among the officers of the government, and the people themselves divided by these into factions and parties. He determined at once to take no sides with either, but to use every endeavor to conciliate and harmonize them. The even-handed justice he administered to all soon established a respect for his person and authority, and perseverance and time wore down animosities, and reunited the citizens again into one family.

Governor Lewis had from early life been subject to hypocondriac affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited by him from his father. They had not, however, been so strong as to give uneasiness to his family. While he lived with me in Washington, I observed at times sensible depressions of mind, but knowing their constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in the family. During his western expedition, the constant exertion which that required of all the faculties of body and mind, suspended these distressing affections; but after his establishment at St. Louis in sedentary occupations, they returned upon him with redoubled vigor, and began seriously to alarm his friends. He was in a paroxysm of one of these when his affairs rendered it necessary for him to go to Washington. He proceeded to the Chickasaw bluffs, where he arrived on the 15th of September, 1809, with a view of continuing his journey thence by water. Mr. Neely, agent of the United States with the Chickasaw Indians, arriving there two days after, found him extremely indisposed, and betraying at times some symptoms of a derangement of mind. The rumors of a war with England, and apprehensions that he might lose the papers he was bringing on, among which were the vouchers of his public accounts, and the journals and papers of his western expedition, induced him here to change his mind, and to take his course by land through the Chickasaw country. Although he appeared somewhat relieved, Mr. Neely kindly determined to accompany and watch over him. Unfortunately, at their encampment, after having passed the Tennessee one day's journey, they lost two horses, which obliging Mr. Neely to halt

for their recovery, the Governor proceeded under a promise to wait for him at the house of the first white inhabitant on his road. He stopped at the house of a Mr. Grinder, who, not being at home, his wife, alarmed at the symptoms of derangement she discovered, gave him up the house, and retired to rest herself in an out-house; the Governor's and Neely's servants lodging in another. About 3 o'clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens, whose valor and intelligence would have been now employed in avenging the wrongs of his country, and in emulating by land the splendid deeds which have honored her arms on the ocean. It lost, too, to the nation the benefit of receiving from his own hand the narrative now offered them of his sufferings and successes in endeavoring to extend for them the boundaries of science, and to present to their knowledge that vast and fertile country which their sons are destined to fill with arts, with science, with freedom and happiness.

To this melancholy close of the life of one whom posterity will declare not to have lived in vain, I have only to add that all the facts I have stated, are either known to myself, or communicated by his family or others, for whose truth I have no hesitation to make myself responsible; and I conclude with tendering you the assurances of my respect and consideration.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF GENERAL KOSCIUSKO.

1. Circumstances relating to General Kosciusko previously to his joining the American Army. Kosciusko was born in the Grand Duchy of Silliciania in the year 1752. His family was noble, and his patrimony considerable; circumstances which he justly appreciated, for as belonging to himself they were never matters of boasting, and rarely subjects of notice, and as the property of others only regarded as advantages when accompanied by good sense and good morals. The workings of his mind on the subject of civil liberty were early and vigorous; before he was twenty the vassalage of his

serfs filled him with abhorrence, and the first act of his manhood was to break their fetters.

In the domestic quarrel between the king and the dissidents. in 1761, he was too young to take a part, but the partition of Poland in 1772 (of which this quarrel was one of the pretences), engaged him in the defence of his country, and soon made him sensible of the value of military education, which he afterwards sought in the schools of Paris. It was there and while prosecuting this object, that he first became acquainted with the name of America, and the nature of the war in which the British colonies were then engaged with the mother country. In the summer of 1776 he embarked for this country, and in October of that year was appointed by Congress a Colonel of Engineers.

2. Services of the General during the war. In the spring of 1777 he joined the northern army, and in July following the writer of this notice left him on Lake Champlain engaged in strengthening our works at Ticonderoga and Mount Independence. The unfortunate character of the early part of this campaign is sufficiently known. In the retreat of the American army Kosciusko was distinguished for activity and courage, and upon him devolved the choice of camps and posts and everything connected with fortifications. The last frontier taken by the army while commanded by Gen. Schuyler was on an island in the Hudson near the mouth of the Mohawk river, and within a few miles of Albany. Here Gates, who had superseded Schuyler, found the army on the day of August. Public feeling and opinion were strikingly affected by the arrival of this officer, who gave it a full and lasting impression by ordering the army to advance upon the enemy. The state of things at that moment are well and faithfully expressed by that distinguished officer, Col. Udney Hay, in a letter to a friend. "Fortune," says he, "as if tired of persecuting us, had began to change, and Burgoyne had suffered materially on both his flanks. But these things were not of our doing; the main army, as it was called, was hunted from post to pillar, and dared not to measure its strength with the enemy; much was wanting to reinspire it with confidence in itself, with that self-respect with