THE EARLY ADVENTURERS
"Well, are you all set, fellows?" demanded Uncle Dick, at last, turning
to his young companions and taking a look over the dismantled camp.
"Just about, sir," answered Rob, who always was accepted as the next
officer to Uncle Dick in command.
"Load her down by the head all you can," said the latter, as the boys
began storing the remaining duffle aboard.
"Why?" asked Jesse, who always wanted to know reasons.
"I'll tell you. This water is so roily you can't see into it very deep.
It has a lot of snags and sweepers and buried stuff. Now, if she rides
with bows high, she slips farther up, say, on a sunken log. If her bow
is down a little, she either doesn't slide on, or else she slips on
over."
"Oh! I hadn't thought of that."
Uncle Dick grinned. "Well, maybe I wouldn't, either, if I hadn't been
reading my Lewis and Clark _Journal_ all over again. They speak of that
very thing. Oh, this is a bad old river, all right. Those men had a hard
time."
"But, sir," answered Rob, "if we load too far down by the bow, our stern
motors won't take hold so well. We've got to bury them."
"That's true, their weight throws the bow very high. I doubt if we can
do much better than have an even keel, but if she'll kick all right,
keep her down all you can in front, for if we ever do ride a log, we'll
strip off the propellers, and maybe the end of the boat, too. Better be
safe than sorry, always."
"They didn't have as good a boat as ours, did they?" John spoke with a
good deal of pride as he cast an eye over the long, racy hull of the
_Adventurer_, whose model was one evolved for easy travel upstream under
oars.
"Well, no, but still they got along, in those days, after their own
fashion. You see, they started out with three boats. First was a big
keel boat, fifty-five feet long, with twenty-two oars and a big square
sail. She drew three feet of water, loaded, and had a ten-foot deck
forward, with lockers midship, which they could stack up for a
breastworks against Indian attacks, if they had to. Oh, she was quite a
ship, all right.
"Then they had a large red perogue--must have been something like ours,
a rangy river skiff, built of boards; certainly not like the little
cypress dugouts they call 'peewoogs' in Louisiana.
"Now they had a third boat, the 'white peroque,' they spell it. It was
smaller, carrying six oars. The red skiff carried the eight French
_voyageurs_----"
"We ought to have all their names, those fellows," said Frank.
"Well, write them down--I've got the _Journal_ handy. Here Captain Clark
gives them, as they were set into squads, May 26th, far up the river.
You see, they were a military party--there were twenty-nine on the
official rolls as volunteers, not mentioning Captains Lewis and Clark,
or York, Captain Clark's negro body servant, who all traveled on the big
boat:
"'Orderly Book: Lewis.
Detachment Orders
_May 26th, 1804._
The Commanding Officers Direct, that the three Squads under the
command of Sergt{s.} 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:)
Serg{t.} Charles Floyd Serg{t.} Nathaniel Pryor
_Privates_ _Privates_
Hugh McNeal George Gibson
Patric Gass George Shannon
Reuben Fields John Shields
John B. Thompson John Collins
John Newman Joseph Whitehouse
Francis Rivet and Peter Wiser
(French) Peter Crusat and
Joseph Fields Francis Labuche
Serg{t.} John Ordway Patroon, Baptist
_Privates_ Deschamps
William Bratton _Engages_
John Collen Etienne Mabbauf
Moses B. Reed (Soldier) Paul Primant
Alexander Willard Charles Hebert
William Warner Baptist La Jeunesse
Silas Goodrich Peter Pinant
John Potts and Peter Roi and
Hugh Hall Joseph Collin
Corp{l.} Richard
Warvington
_Privates_
Robert Frazier
John Boleye
John Dame
Ebinezer Tuttle and
Isaac White
"'The Commanding Officers further direct that the messes of
Serg{ts.} 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; Corp{l.}
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, Sacagawea, 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 the
_Journal_ the 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 their _Journals_ after 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
the _Adventurer_.
"They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some
education, and his mind was 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 the _Journal_ spelled 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 officers would 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 until February, 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 great _Journal_ have 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 as good 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 old _Journal_ certainly
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 was a 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. The _Journals_ are always done in pen and ink. Clark did
most of the work in the _Journal_, 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 wonderful _Journal_, 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 a great
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 the
_Journal_. 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 ship _Adventurer_ swung free of 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.