The Expedition of Lewis and Clark

MESSRS. A. C. MCCLURG and Company have performed a public service in their dignified and attractive reprint of a book ¹ that has long been known to a few as a sort of American prose Homer. Its opening sentences announce the theme, in words that cannot be bettered : “ On the acquisition of Louisiana, in the year 1803, the attention of the government of the United States was early directed toward exploring and improving the new territory. Accordingly, in the summer of the same year, an expedition was planned by the President for the purpose of discovering the courses and sources of the Missouri, and the most convenient water communication thence to the Pacific Ocean. His private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, and Captain William Clark, both officers of the army of the United States, were associated in the command of this enterprise. After receiving the requisite instructions, Captain Lewis left the seat of government, and being joined by Captain Clark at Louisville, in Kentucky, proceeded to St. Louis, where they arrived in the month of December.”

Thus begins the story of the stouthearted, iron-bodied captains. Day by day one can follow them and their company of frontiersmen as they row and sail up the long reaches of the Missouri in the summer of 1804 ; as they winter with the Mandan Indians ; and as they cross the Rockies, first of white men, in that marvelous second summer, and follow the Columbia River to its mouth. One lives with them in that wet winter weather by the sea, and through the terrible months of starvation and peril in the third summer, when they recross the mountains, and drift downstream to St. Louis, where they landed in September, 1806. What men they were ! Tireless, cool, merry ; dancing at night to the music of a Virginia violin amid the grim fastnesses of mountain and wilderness ; mighty axemen, hunters, horse-tamers, they did what no Americans can ever have the luck to do again.

The present volumes are an accurate reprint of the original Biddle text of 1814, now very rare. Dr. James K. Hosmer, who writes with authority concerning all matters dealing with the Louisiana Purchase, contributes an adequate Introduction. Thomas Jefferson’s sketch of the Life of Meriwether Lewis, written for the 1814 edition, is retained. Facsimiles of the original maps are presented. It would have been well, perhaps, to include a present day map, showing the development of the territory over which the explorers passed. But this lack can easily be supplied, and it is at most a trivial defect in an admirable piece of book-making.

P.