“‘Orderly Book: Lewis.Detachment OrdersMay 26th, 1804.The Commanding Officers Direct, that the three Squads under the command of Sergts.Floyd, Ordway and Pryor, heretofore forming two messes each, shall untill further orders constitute three messes only, the same being altered and organized as follows (viz:)Sergt.Charles FloydSergt.Nathaniel PryorPrivatesPrivatesHugh McNealGeorge GibsonPatric GassGeorge ShannonReuben FieldsJohn ShieldsJohn B. ThompsonJohn CollinsJohn NewmanJoseph WhitehouseFrancis Rivet andPeter Wiser(French)Peter Crusat andJoseph FieldsFrancis LabucheJoseph FieldsFrancis LabucheSergt.John OrdwayPatroon, BaptistPrivatesDeschampsWilliam BrattonEngagésJohn CollenEtienne MabbaufMoses B. Reed (Soldier)Paul PrimantAlexander WillardCharles HebertWilliam WarnerBaptist La JeunesseSilas GoodrichPeter PinantJohn Potts andPeter Roi andHugh HallJoseph CollinCorpl.RichardWarvingtonPrivatesRobert FrazierJohn BoleyeJohn DameEbinezer Tuttle andIsaac WhiteThe Commanding Officers further direct that the messes of Sergts.Floyd, Ordway, and Pryor shall untill further orders form the crew of the Batteaux; the Mess of the Patroon La Jeunesse will form the permanent crew of the red Peroque; Corpl.Warvington’s men forming that of the white Peroque.’
“‘Orderly Book: Lewis.
Detachment OrdersMay 26th, 1804.
The Commanding Officers Direct, that the three Squads under the command of Sergts.Floyd, Ordway and Pryor, heretofore forming two messes each, shall untill further orders constitute three messes only, the same being altered and organized as follows (viz:)
Sergt.Charles FloydSergt.Nathaniel PryorPrivatesPrivatesHugh McNealGeorge GibsonPatric GassGeorge ShannonReuben FieldsJohn ShieldsJohn B. ThompsonJohn CollinsJohn NewmanJoseph WhitehouseFrancis Rivet andPeter Wiser(French)Peter Crusat andJoseph FieldsFrancis LabucheJoseph FieldsFrancis LabucheSergt.John OrdwayPatroon, BaptistPrivatesDeschampsWilliam BrattonEngagésJohn CollenEtienne MabbaufMoses B. Reed (Soldier)Paul PrimantAlexander WillardCharles HebertWilliam WarnerBaptist La JeunesseSilas GoodrichPeter PinantJohn Potts andPeter Roi andHugh HallJoseph CollinCorpl.RichardWarvingtonPrivatesRobert FrazierJohn BoleyeJohn DameEbinezer Tuttle andIsaac White
The Commanding Officers further direct that the messes of Sergts.Floyd, Ordway, and Pryor shall untill further orders form the crew of the Batteaux; the Mess of the Patroon La Jeunesse will form the permanent crew of the red Peroque; Corpl.Warvington’s men forming that of the white Peroque.’
“There it all is, just as Captain Lewis wrote it, capitals and all. How many would it be, Rob—not forgetting the two captains and the negro York, Clark’s body servant, who is not mentioned in the list?”
“I make it forty-one names here in the messes,” answered Rob, after counting, “or forty-four with the others added. That does not include Chaboneau or the Indian girl, Sacágawea, whom they took on at Mandan.”
“No, that’s another list. It usually is said there were forty-five in the party at St. Louis. You see the name ‘Francis Rivet and (French).’ That would make forty-five if French were a man French and not a Frenchman. But they always spoke of the voyagers as ‘the French.’ Anyhow, there’s the list of May 26, 1804.”
“Maybe they lost a man overboard somewhere,” suggested John.
“Not yet. They had a deserter or two, but that was farther up the river, and they caught one of these and gave him a good military trimming and expulsion, as we’ll see later. But this I suppose we may call the actual party that found our Great West for us. They are the Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery.”
The three boys looked half in awe as they read over the names of these forgotten men.
“Yes. So there they were,” resumed Uncle Dick, gravely. “And here in theJournalthe very first sentence says the party was ‘composed of robust, healthy, hardy young men.’ Well, that’s the sort I’ve got along with me, what?”
“But Uncle Dick—Uncle Dick—” broke in Jesse, excitedly, “your book is all wrong! Just look at the way the spelling is! It’s awful. It wasn’t that way in the copies we had.”
“That’s because this is a real and exact copy of what they really did write down,” said Uncle Dick. “Yours must have been one of the rewritten and much-edited volumes. To my mind, that’s a crime. Here’s the real thing.
“Listen!” he added, suddenly, holding the volume close to him. “Would you like to know something about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and what became of theirJournalsafter they got home? You’d hardly believe it.”
“Tell us,” said Rob.
Uncle Dick opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail of theAdventurer.
“They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some education, and his mindwas very keen. He was the private secretary of President Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not ‘regularly educated.’ He studied some months in astronomy and other scientific lines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the special purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicott had experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in the woods, the record says.
“Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years the older—thirty-three—while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells better than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever you see anything of theJournalspelled correctly, it is false and spurious—that’s not the original, for spelling was the one thing those two fellows couldn’t do.
“They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had an elk-skin cover to his book—and that little book disappeared for over one hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distant relatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten years ago.
“At night, by the camp fire, the two officerswould write out their field notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson. Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy the other’s notes. Only the originals could make all that plain. And, alas! not all the original work is known to exist.
“No one seems to have valued the written record of that wonderful trip. When the young men got to St. Louis on their return, they did try to make a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and they couldn’t get a publisher—think of that! But at last they did get an editor, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, he was, of Philadelphia.
“That poor man waded through over one million words of copy in the ‘notes’ he got hold of at last! But by then President Jefferson was getting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clark was busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was a writer. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered.
“Biddle saved the most of it, boiling it down quite a lot. Then he gave it over to Paul Allen, a newspaper man, also of Philadelphia, who did more things to it, getting it ready for the press. This book did not get published untilFebruary, 1814, five years after Lewis died and eight years after they got back. By that time a lot of people had had a hack at it. A lot more have had a hack since then; but Biddle is the man who really saved the day, and Allen helped him very much.
“Of late, inside of the last twenty or thirty years, many editions of that greatJournalhave been issued. The best is the one that holds closest to Clark’s spelling. That’s the best. And I’ll tell you it took genius, sometimes, to tell what he meant, for that redhead spelled by ear.
“Look here—and here. ‘Catholic’ he spells ‘Carthlick’; ‘Loups’—the Indians—he calls ‘Loos.’ He spells ‘gnat’ ‘knat,’ or spells ‘mosquito’ ‘musquitr,’ and calls the ‘tow rope’ the ‘toe rope’—as indeed Lewis did also. He spells ‘squaw’ as ‘squar’ always; and ‘Sioux’ he wrote down as ‘Cuouex’—which makes one guess a bit—and the ‘Osages’ are ‘Osarges,’ the Iowas, ‘Ayauways.’ His men got ‘deesantary’ and ‘tumers,’ which were ‘dificcelt to cure.’ He gives a dog ‘som meet,’ and speaks of a storm which ‘seased Instancetaniously.’ He does a lot of odd things with big words and little ones, as spelling ‘cedar’ ‘seeder’—at least the simplest way! As to jerked meat, I suppose it was asgood if spelled ‘jurked,’ or even ‘jirked,’ and a ‘tirkey’ is as good as turkey, perhaps.
“Plain and matter-of-fact, he was, that Redhead Chief, as the Indians called him; yet very little escaped him or his friend, and both could note the beauty of nature. See here, where Clark writes on June 20th (his capitals are odd as his spelling): ‘at Sunset the atmesphier presented every appearance of wind, Blue and White Streeks centiring at the Sun as she disappeared and the Clouds Situated to the S. W. Guilded in the most butiful manner.’
“Can’t you see the sunset? And can’t you see Will Clark, his tongue on one side, frowning as he wrote by the firelight?
“And Lewis wasn’t so much better. For instance, he spelled squirrel as ‘squirril,’ where Clark spells it ‘squarl,’ and he spells hawk ‘halk,’ and hangs a ‘Meadle’ on a chief’s neck. Oh, this oldJournalcertainly is a curious thing!”
Jesse threw himself down on the sand in a fit of laughter. “I could do better’n that my own self,” said he, at last. “Why, what sort of people were they, couldn’t spell any better than that?”
“Maybe you could,” said Uncle Dick, “but you are not to laugh at William Clark, who wasa great man. He did all that writing after a hard day’s work, in a wild and strange country. I suppose it was hard for him to write, but he did it, and here it is.
“Oddly enough, Clark wrote a very fine, clear hand—a gentleman’s handwriting. TheJournalsare always done in pen and ink. Clark did most of the work in theJournal, but Lewis at times took a hand. Between them they kept what might be called the log of the voyage.
“They worked, all of that party. The oarsmen had to work under a taskmaster all day. Some one had to hunt, for they only had about a ton of cargo, all told, and they only had $2,500 to spend for the whole trip out and back, and to feed forty people two years. And at night the commanders made Gass and Ordway and Floyd and Whitehouse keep journals, too; and Pryor and Frazier did a bit of the same, like enough. They had to cover everything they saw.
“So that is how we got this wonderfulJournal, boys—one of the simplest and most manly books ever written. As I said, it was long forgotten and came near being ruined.
“The book of Patrick Gass got out first, and it had many publishers on both sides the ocean—though, of course, it had to be rewritten agreat deal. Up to 1851 there had been fifteen real and fake Lewis and Clark books printed, in English, French, and German; and there are about a dozen books with Sergeant Patrick Gass as the ‘author.’
“They had no cameras in those days, but those men brought out exact word pictures of that land and its creature inhabitants. The spelling we must forget—that day was different and schools were rare. But good minds and bodies they surely had. They were not traders or trappers—they were explorers and adventurers in every sense of the word, and gentlemen as well.
“But now,” concluded Uncle Dick, “that’ll do for the story of theJournal. We’ve got it with us, and will use it right along. We’re all ready, now? Well, let’s be off, for now I see the wind is with us, and it’s even more than William Clark started with when his three boats left the Wood River and started up the Missouri. He said they had a ‘jentle brease.’
“Off we go—on the greatest waterway in all the world, and on the trail of the greatest explorers the world has ever known.”
“Now then,” commanded Rob, laying hold of the rail. “Heave—o!” The others also pushed. The good shipAdventurerswung freeof the sand and lay afloat. They sprang in. Uncle Dick steadied her with the oars. Jesse and John went ahead to trim ship. Rob gave a couple of turns to the flywheels of the two outboard motors and adjusted his feet to the special steering gear. The doubled motors began their busy sput-sput-sput! Like a thing of life the long craft,Adventurer, of America, turned into the current of the great Missouri, the echoes of the energetic little engines echoing far and wide.
“
She’s riding fine, sir,” called Rob to Uncle Dick, over the noise of the two little propellers that kept the gunwales trembling. “I can head her square into the mid current and buck her through!”
Uncle Dick smiled and nodded. “It’s going to be all right! She rides like a duck. Spread that foresail, Frank, you and Jesse. We’ll do our six miles an hour, sure as shooting! Haul that foresail squarer, Jesse, so she won’t spill the wind. Now, Rob, keep her dead ahead.”
“How far did they go each day?” demanded Jesse, “and how often did they eat?”
They all broke out in a roar of laughter over Jesse’s appetite.
“They ate when they could,” answered Uncle Dick, “for they had their hands full, working that big scow upstream. She was loaded heavy, and they often had to drag her on the line. When the line broke, as it did several times, she’d swing into the current and there’d be trouble to pay.
“How far did they go? Well, that’s really hard to say. They usually set down the courses and distances on the bends. For instance, here is the first record of that sort, May 15th. ‘St’ means starboard, right-hand side going up, and ‘Lbd’ means larboard, to the left.
“‘Course and Distance assending the Missourie Tuesday May 15.
CourseMlsWest1-0—To pton StSideN 80°W2-0—“ ““ “ “N 11°W2-½—“ ““ “ “N 20°W1-½—“ ““ Lbd“S 10°W1-½—“ ““ St“S 22°W1-0—“ ““ “ “——9-½’
“We’ll not try to keep our own courses, and we’ll have to guess at our distances except as we can estimate it from average speed, which is what they also did. I suppose it seemed a long way. Patrick Gass says it was three thousand and ninety-six miles to the head of the river. Anyhow, they didn’t make it as soon as we shall.”
They ran on steadily, both motors firing perfectly and the sun bright overhead, while the fresh breeze back of them still held fair for most of the bends. They made St. Charles bynoon, as had been predicted, but did not pause, eating their lunch aboard as they traveled.
“Our captains didn’t do this,” said Rob. “As near as I can learn, they camped and cooked on shore. And they certainly got plenty of game.”
“I know!” said Jesse, his mouth full of bread and marmalade. “Deer and turkey all along in here, then.”
“Sure!” added John. “Thirty deer, four bear, and two wolves in the first six weeks.”
Uncle Dick sighed. “Well, we’ll have to live on rolls and marmalade, and if Jesse’s appetite holds we’ll have to make a good many towns for supplies. More’s the pity, there’s a good town now about every ten miles or so—two dozen towns in the first two hundred and fifty miles.”
“Aw now!” said Jesse. “Aw now! I guess a fellow can’t help getting hungry. Maybe we can catch some fish, anyhow.”
“Gass said they did,” nodded John. “They got a lot of fine catfish, and I think Patrick Gass must have liked them, way he talks. He says, ‘We are generally well supplied with catfish, the best I have ever seen.’”
“What kind of a grub list did they have?” inquired Jesse; and John was able to answer,for he found the page in theJournal, which was close at hand on a box top, so it could be consulted at any time.
“They didn’t have any marmalade or preserves, or fruit or acid of any kind, and they must have relied on the hunt. They had four bags of ‘parchmeal,’ which I suppose was parched corn ground—the old frontier ration, you know. That was about twenty-eight bushels in all, with some eighteen bushels of ‘common’ and twenty-two bushels of hominy. Then they had thirty half barrels of flour, and a dozen barrels of biscuit, a barrel of meal, fifty bushels of meal, twenty-four bushels of Natchez hulled corn, four barrels of other hulled corn, and one of meal. That was their cereal list.
“They only had one bag of coffee, and one each of ‘Beens & pees,’ as Clark spells them, and only two bags of sugar, though eight hundred and seventy pounds of salt.”
“Not much sweets,” grumbled Jesse. “How about the grease list?” Jesse was rather wise about making up a good, well-balanced grub list for a camping trip.
“Well,” answered John, “they had forty-five hundred pounds of pork, a keg of lard, and six hundred pounds of ‘grees,’ as he calls it.Not so much; and they ran out of salt in a year, and out of flour, too, so they didn’t have any bread for months. They had some stuff spoiled by getting wet.
“They had some trade stuff for the Indians, and tools of all sorts, and other weapons and ammunition. They had sun glasses and an air gun and instruments for latitude and longitude. They were travelers, all right.”
“Lay her a half north, fifty-seven degrees west, and full steam ahead!” sang out Uncle Dick. “Cut this big bend and take the wind on the larboard quarter, Jesse. I’ll promise you, if our gas holds out, we’ll get somewhere before dark. TheAdventurer, of Americais a mile eater, believe me!”
“
One thing sure,” said Rob, after a long silence, toward the close of the afternoon, “this isn’t any wilderness now. Look at the fields and settlements we’ve passed. There’s a town every ten miles.”
“Well, I don’t think it was all wild, even when Lewis and Clark went through,” John replied to him. “People had been all through here. TheJournalkeeps on mentioning this creek and that—all the names were already on the country.”
“Shall we get as far as Charette to-day, Uncle Dick?” asked Jesse.
“Hardly, this country has changed a lot in a hundred years and I don’t know just where we are. I’m only guessing, doing dead reckoning on our motor speed. But we ought to see the place I’ve got in mind, before plumb dark.”
“See what, Uncle Dick? What is it?”
“Never mind. I’ll tell you if we make it.”
However, Uncle Dick was shrewd in his map work and his guessing. Toward dark the boysbegan to get anxious as the shadows fell along the deep, powerful river, but they had no sign to land until it was well after sunset. Then Uncle Dick began to whistle cheerfully.
“All right, Rob,” he called. “Hard a-lee! Get across. That creek on the right is the Femme Osage. There were forty families settled there, six miles up the river, and one of those farmers was—who do you think?”
“I know!” exclaimed John. “It was Daniel Boone! I’ve read about his moving in here from Kentucky.”
“Right you are, son! He had a Spanish land grant in here and lived here till 1804. He died in 1820, at the town called Femme Osage, as you know.
“Well now, here we are! In under the rocks, Rob—so! Now quick, Jesse, make fast at the bow!”
“Well, what do you know!” exclaimed Jesse. “Regular cave, and everything!”
“Yes,” smiled his uncle, “a regular cave and all. Lucky to hit it so well and to find it still doing business—at least part way—after a hundred years!”
They scrambled up the bank to the opening of the cavern which made back into the bold rocky shore, finding the interior about twelvefeet wide and running back for forty feet, with a height of some twenty feet. It was blackened with smoke in places, and many names were cut in the rock.
“Hard run up the swift chutes to get here,” said Uncle Dick, “but I’m glad we made it. This old cave was called the ‘Tavern,’ even before Lewis and Clark, and all the river men used to stop here. Quite homey, eh?
“We are lucky to have done in a day what it took Lewis and Clark nine hard days to do. They made only nine miles the last day, and found the water ‘excessively swift.’ Well, so did we; but here we are.”
With the swiftness born of many nights in camp together, the four now unpacked the needful articles, not putting up any tent, but spreading it down on the floor of the cave. Their fire lit up the rocks in a wild and picturesque manner as they sat near, cooking and eating their first meal of the actual voyage up the great Missouri.
“They got a deer that day,” said Rob, poring over theJournal, “I expect about their first deer.”
Rob was turning over the pages on ahead. “Hah!” said he. “The men didn’t always take care of the grub; here it says, ‘Lyed corn andGrece will be issued, the next day Poark and flour, and the following, Indian meal and Poark, according to this Rotiene till further orders. No Poark will be issued when we have fresh meat on hand!’”
“You listen, now, Jesse. With breakfast bacon at sixty cents a pound, and your appetite, we’ll have to go after meat. Get out that throw line of yours and see if we can’t hang a catfish by morning. Here’s a piece of beef for bait.”
Jesse scrambled down the shore and threw out his line, with a rock for sinker, while the others finished making ready the beds.
“Jolly old place,” ventured John, “though a little hard for a bed. What you looking at, Rob?”
“I was trying to find if the old Indian images were left, that used to be scratched or painted on the walls. Clark says thevoyageursand Indians were superstitious about this place. I think caves are always spooky places.”
Soon they all felt tired and began to unroll the beds. A screech owl made a tremulous, eerie note, but even Jesse only laughed at that.
They had breakfast before the mist was off the water, and before the cooking was begun Jesse called out from below:
“Hey, there! Wait for me! I’ve got the breakfast right here! Call in the lyed corn and pork. Here’s a catfish, four pounds, anyhow!”
“Clean him, Jess,” called Rob, “and cut him up small enough to fry.”
Jesse did so, and soon the slices were sizzling in the pan.
“Well, anyhow,” commented their leader, “though not as good as venison, it’s wild game, eh? And our way has always been to live off the country all we could without breaking laws.”
“What changes, from then till now!” said Rob. “It was spring and summer when they went up this river, but they killed deer, turkeys, elk, buffalo, antelope, and wild fowl—hundreds—all the time. Now, all that’s unlawful.”
“And impossible. Yes, they lived as the Indians lived, and they killed game the year round. Now, about all we can do for a while will be to eat the trusty catfish.
“One thing has not changed,” their leader added, a little later, “and that is the current along the rock faces. Just above is what Clark called ‘The Deavels race ground’—a half mile that will try your motors, Rob. The big keel boat got in all sorts of trouble that day, whirlingaround, getting on bars, breaking her line and all that. The expedition came near getting into grief—men had to go overboard and steady her, and they were swimming, poling, rowing, and tracking all that day.”
Indeed, the great river seemed disposed to show the young travelers that her prowess had not diminished. They had a hard fight that day in more than one fast chute, and twice dragged the propellers on bars which they did not see at all. Uncle Dick used the oars three or four hours that day, and Jesse, the boatman, spread his foresail to gain such added power as was possible. In this way they made very good time, so that by late evening they reached the mouth of the Gasconade, which comes in from the left from the hill country. They got a good camp near the mouth, with abundance of wood. Jesse was so lucky as to take two fine wall-eyed pike, here called jack salmon, on his set line, as well as two catfish. They let the latter go, as they had enough for the day, the wall-eyes proving excellent.
“Now we’re beginning to get into deer!” said Rob. “Here George Shannon killed a deer, and Reuben Fields got one the next day. And all the time, as you no doubt remember, we’ve been meeting canoes coming down fromthe Omahas and Osages and Pawnees and Kansas, loaded down with furs!”
“I remember perfectly,” asserted John, solemnly. “I can see them going by right now! Pretty soon we pick up old man Dorion, coming down from the Sioux, and hire him to go back as an interpreter for us.”
“Could catch a lot of catfish and ‘jurk’ the meat, the way Captain Clark did venison,” said Jesse, at length.
According to their usual custom when on the trail, they were off by sunup, the exhaust of the double motors making the wooded shore echo again. They made their third encampment at the mouth of a stream which they took to be that called Good Woman River in theJournal—a name no longer known on their map.
“Whew!” complained Uncle Dick, as he got out and stretched his legs. “This is cramping me as bad as the trenches in the Argonne. You fellows’ll ‘do me in,’ as the British used to say, if I don’t look out! How far do you think we’ve come in the three days, Rob?”
“Let’s see. I figure about one hundred and ninety to two hundred miles, that’s all! What Lewis and Clark needed was our boat and a few outboard kickers. It took them till June 7th, twenty-three days, to get to this point.We’ve gained, you might say, three weeks on their time.”
“Yes, but they got three bears at this camp, and we’ve got nothing! We don’t dare kill even a squirrel, though I’m sure we could get some sort of game in this rough country not far back.” John spoke ruefully.
“Don’t kick, John,” advised Jesse, sagely. “I’ll take care of you. Besides, look at the big help the wind was to-day. Clark says he had only a ‘jentle breese’ in here.”
“Or words to that effect,” smiled Rob. “The main thing is, we travel many times faster than they possibly could. Even so, she’s a long trail ahead.”
“All we know is that we’ll get through!” said John. “We always have.”
“We’re discovering romance,” said Uncle Dick. “We’re discovering America, too. Jesse, take down your Flag from the bow staff—don’t you know the Flag must never be allowed to fly after sunset?”
They were now lying in their blankets in their tent, on a wind-swept point. “I wonder if Captain Clark took down the flag. Now, I wonder——”
But what Jesse wondered was lost, for soon he was asleep.
Nearly a week had passed since the last recorded camp of the crew of theAdventurer—spent in steady progress across the great and beautiful state of Missouri and its rich bottom lands, its many towns, its farms and timber lands and prairies. Many an exclamation at the wild beauty of some passing scene had been theirs in the constant succession of changing river landscapes.
Their own adventures they had had, too, with snags and sweepers and the dreaded “rolling sands” over which the current boiled and hissed ominously; but the handlers of the boat were well used to bad water on their earlier trips together, in the upper wildernesses of the continent, so they made light of these matters.
“I don’t believe that Patrick Gass put down all the bears they got,” said Jesse. “Clark says they got a lot, sometimes two a day, and they ‘jurked’ the meat, the same as vension. Gee! I wish I’d been along!”
Rob smiled. “I expect the hunters had ahard time enough. They had to work through heavy weeds and vines in these bottoms, and if they got back in very far they had to guess where the boat would be. And even Lewis complains of ticks and mosquitoes and heavy going ashore.”
“I believe things poisoned Clark worse than they did Lewis, he was so fair skinned,” said John. “One of his regular entries all along was, ‘Mosquitrs (or musketos or muskeeters) very troublesome.’”
“Poor Clark!” smiled Rob. “What with rubbing ‘musquitr’ bites and spelling in his daily report, he must have had a hard time. He had another regular entry, too, as you said, Jesse, that about the ‘jentle brease.’ I don’t know how many ways he spelled it, but he seems to have had no confidence at all in his own spelling. Look here: on June 1st he has a ‘jentle brease,’ and on June 20th a ‘jentle breese’; but not content when he got it right, he calls it a ‘gentle Breeze’ the next time, then drops back to ‘gentle breeze’ on July 21st. He repeats that on August 12th, the next raising it to ‘gentle Breeze’; and then it’s a ‘gentle breeze,’ a ‘jentle Breeze,’ ‘gentle breeze,’ and ‘gentle Brease’—till he gets perfectly irresponsible, up the river!”
“What a funny man!” snickered Jesse, once more.
“He didn’t do it to be funny,” said Rob. “Once I asked a kid cow puncher to make a horse pitch some more for me, so I could make a photo of it; and he said, ‘Why, I didn’t make him pitch—he just done that hisself.’ Well, I guess that’s how to account for Clark’s spelling—he ‘just done that hisself.’”
Uncle Dick had not been paying much attention to the boys just then, but was watching the smoke clouds ahead. Passing trains whistled loudly and frequently. The shores became more populated.
“Two miles more and we’ll round to full view of Kansas City, young men,” said he. “We’ve crossed the whole and entire state of Missouri, three hundred and ninety miles—from one great city to another great one.
“St. Louis—Kansas City! Each in her day has been the Gate to the West. In 1847, Independence, over to the left, was going back, and even the new boat landing of Westport was within the year to be called Kansas City. Then she was the Gate indeed, and so she has remained through various later sorts of transportation.
“When St. Louis laid down the oar andpaddle, Kansas City took up the ox whip. When the railroads came, she was sitting on the job.
“You’ve seen one old town site of New Franklin, opposite Boonville, halfway across the state; and now I want you to study this great city here, hardly more than threescore years and ten of age—just a man’s lifetime. Picture this place as it then was—full of the ox teams going west——”
“Oh, can’t we go over the Oregon Trail, too—next year, Uncle Dick?” broke in John.
“Maybe. Don’t ask me too many questions too far ahead. Now, think back to the time of Lewis and Clark—not a settlement or a house of a white man above La Charette, and not one here. To them this was just the mouth of the Kansas, or ‘Kansau,’ River, and little enough could they learn about that river. Look at the big bluffs and the trees. And yonder were the Prairies; and back of them the Plains. No one knew them then.
“As you know, they had been getting more and more game as they approached this place. Now the deer and bears and turkeys fairly thronged. Patrick Gass says, ‘I never saw so much sign of game in my life,’ and theJournalstell of the abundance of game killed—Clarkspeaks of the deer killed the day they got here, June 26th, and says, ‘I observed a great number of Parrot quetts this evening.’ That Carolina parrakeet is mentioned almost all the way across Kansas by the Oregon Trail men, and it used to be thick in middle Illinois. All gone now—gone with many another species of American wild life—gone with the bears and turkeys and deer we didn’t see. You couldn’t find a parrakeet at the mouth of the ‘Kanzas’ River to-day, unless you bought it in a bird store, that’s sure.
“But think of the giant trees in here, those days—sycamores, cottonwoods, as well as oaks and ash and hickories and elms and mulberries and maples. And the grass tall as a man’s waist, and ‘leavel,’ as they called it. Is it any wonder that Will Clark got worked up over some of the views he saw from high points on the river bends? Those, my boys, were the happy days—oh, I confess, Jesse, many a time I’ve wished I’d been there my own self!”
“How do you check up on the distances with Clark? How long did it take them to get this far?”
“Just forty-three days, sir,” replied Jesse, the youngest of them all, who also had been keeping count.
“Yes—around seven miles a day! We’ve done seven miles an hour, many a time. Where they took a week we’ll take a day, let us say. From here to Mandan, North Dakota, where they wintered, is more than fourteen hundred miles by river, and they took about one hundred and twenty days to it—averaging only nine and a half or ten miles a day of actual travel in that part of the river. Clark fails once or twice to log the day’s distance. Gass calls it sixteen hundred and ten miles from the start to Mandan—I make it about fifteen hundred and fifty, with such figures as I find set down. The River Commission call it fourteen hundred and fifty-two. Give us fifty miles a day for thirty days, and that would be fifteen hundred miles—why, we’re a couple of hundred miles beyond Mandan right now—on paper!
“But I never saw anything that ran by gas that didn’t get its back up sometimes. Suppose we allow a month to get up to Mandan—bringing us there by June 22d—call it June 30th. How’d that do? Do you think we can make it—say forty-odd miles a day—or even thirty?”
“Sure we can!” said Jesse, stoutly.
“Yes—on paper!” repeated Uncle Dick. “Well, there’s many a sand bar between hereand Mandan, and many a long mile. Lewis and Clark did not get there until October 26th—four months from here. If we allow ourselves one month, we’ll only have to go four or five times as fast as they did. I’ve known a flat bottom ‘John boat’ do forty miles a day on the Current River of Missouri with only one outboard motor; and that’s a six-mile current, good and stiff. Let us not count our chickens just yet, but keep on plugging. I must say Rob is a wizard with the engines, this far, at least.
“And now, if we’re done with the arithmetic——”
“We’re not,” interrupted Jesse. “I’ve set down the fish I’ve caught this far, and it’s three wall-eyes and twelve catfish. That’s fifteen head of game against their thirty, about!”
“Oh! And you want to know, if a boy of your size could catch fifteen head of fish in eight days, how many could we all catch in thirty days? That’s getting out of my depth, Jesse! I don’t know, but I hope that the gasoline and the catfish both hold out, for they are our main staffs of life just now.”
They ran up the left bluff of the river, mile after mile, under the edge of the great town whose chimneys belched black smoke, noting railway train after train, their own impudentlittle motors making as much noise as the next along the water front. Many a head was turned to catch sight of their curious twin-screw craft, with the flag at its bow, and on the stern the nameAdventurer, of America, but Rob paid no attention to this, holding her stiff into the current and heading in answer to Uncle Dick’s signals.
At last they lay alongside a little landing to which a houseboat was moored, occupied by a riverman whom Uncle Dick seemed to know.
“How do you do, Johnson,” said he, as the man poked his head out of the companionway. “You see we’re here.”
“And more’n I’d of bet on, at that!” rejoined the other. “I never expected ye could make it up at all. How long ye been—a month or so?”
“A week or so,” replied Uncle Dick, carelessly, and not showing his pride in the performance of the party. “You see, we’ve got double engines and we travel under forced draught, with the stokers stripped to the waist and doing eight shifts a day.”
“Like enough, like enough!” laughed Johnson, not crediting their run. “Well, what kin I do fer ye here?”
“Get our tanks filled. Unpack our boat and store the stuff on your boat so it can’t be stolen.Overrun our engines and oil her up. Clean out the bilge and make her a sweet ship.”
“When?”
“To-day. But we’ll not start until to-morrow morning. I’ve got a few friends to see here, and my Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery will like to look around a little. We’ll stop at a hotel to-night. I’m trusting you to have everything ready for us by nine to-morrow morning.”
“That’s all right,” replied Johnson. “I’ll not fail ye, and I’ll not let anything git losted, neither.”
“I know that,” said Uncle Dick. “By the way, Johnson, which is the best outfitting store in Westport?”
“As which, sir?”
“In Westport, or say Independence. We could walk down there if we had to. Not so far.”
Old Johnson scratched his head. “Go on, Colonel, you’re always havin’ yer joke. I’m sure I don’t know what ye mean by Indypendence, or Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks yan. Er maybe ye’d like a taxi?”
“No, nothing that goes by gas, for one day, anyhow, Johnson. Well, see to the things—thecrew have got the batteau about unloaded, and it’s about time for our mess to go ashore to the cook fire. Sergeant McIntyre, issue the lyed corn with the bear and venison stew to-night, and see that my ink horn and traveling desk are at hand!”
“Yes, sir, very good sir!” returned Rob, gravely. And without a smile the four stalked off up the stair, leaving Johnson to wonder what in the world they meant.
Uncle Dick excused himself from the party for a time in the evening, having some business to attend to. He left the three boys in their room at a hotel, declaring they all would rather sleep on the houseboat with Johnson.
“It’s mighty quiet on this trip,” said Jesse.
“Nothing happens?” said Rob, looking up from his maps and theJournalwhich he had spread on the table. “That’s what the explorers thought when they got here! They wanted to start in killing buffalo, but there were no buffalo so close to the river even then. All our hunters got was deer; they lay here a couple of days and got plenty of deer, and did some tanning and ‘jurking.’ Clark says they took this chance to compare their ‘instrimunts,’ and also they ‘suned their powder and wollen articles.’
“Clark killed a deer below here. Drewyer, one of the best hunters, had a fat bear and a deer, too. And Lewis killed a deer next day, so the party was in ‘fine Sperrits.’”
“Oh, so would I be in fine ‘sperrits’ if I could kill a deer or so,” grumbled Jesse. “Now look at us!”
“Well,” went on Rob, “look at us, then. See here, what Clark says about it: