"The Osage might with a little attention be made to form an ornamental and useful hedge. The fruit is a large oval plum, of a pale yellow colour and exquisite flavour. An opinion prevails among the Osages that the fruit is poisonous, though they acknowledge they have never tasted it."
The leaders of all the French colonies on the Mississippi were gentlemen of education and talent. They saw what the cession meant, and hailed it with welcome. But the masses, peaceable, illiterate, with little property and less enterprise, contented, unambitious, saw not the future of that great valley where their fathers had camped in the days of La Salle. Frank, open, joyous, unsuspecting, wrapped in the pleasures of the passing hour, they cared little for wealth and less for government provided they were not worried with its cares. Their children, their fruits and flowers, the dance—happy always were the Creole habitants provided only they heard the fiddle string. Retaining all the suavity of his race, the roughest hunter could grace a ballroom with the carriage and manners of a gentleman.
Meanwhile Captain Clark was drilling the men at camp after the fashion of Wayne. Other soldiers had been engaged at Fort Massac and elsewhere,—Silas Goodrich, Richard Windsor, Hugh Hall, Alexander Willard, and John B. Thompson, a surveyor of Vincennes.
Never had St. Louis such days! Hurry, hurry and bustle in the staid and quiet town that had never before known any greater excitement than a church festival or a wedding,—never, that is, since those days of war when George Rogers Clark saved and when he threatened.
But now Lewis and Clark made a deep impression on the villagers of the power and dignity of the United States Government. Out of their purchases every merchant hoped to make a fortune; the eager Frenchmen displayed their wares,—coffee, gunpowder, and blankets, tea at prices fabulous in deerskin currency and sugar two dollars a pound.
But Lewis already had made up his outfit,—richly laced coats, medals and flags from Jefferson himself, knives, tomahawks, and ornaments for chiefs, barrels of beads, paints and looking-glasses, bright-coloured three-point Mackinaw blankets, a vision to dazzle a child or an Indian, who is also a child.
George Drouillard was found, the skilled hunter. There was a trace of Indian in Drouillard; his French fathers and grandfathers had trapped along the streams of Ohio and Canada since before the days of Pontiac, in fact, with Cadillac they had helped to build Detroit.
Every part of America was represented in that first exploring expedition,—Lewis, the kinsman of Washington, and Clark from the tidewater cavaliers of old Virginia, foremost of the fighting stock that won Kentucky and Illinois, Puritan Yankees from New England, Quaker Pennsylvanians from Carlisle, descendants of landholders in the days of Penn, French interpreters and adventurers whose barkentines had flashed along our inland lakes and streams for a hundred years, and finally, York, the negro, forerunner of his people.
Cruzatte and Labiche, canoemen, were of old Kaskaskia. Pierre Cruzatte was near-sighted and one-eyed, but what of that? A trusted trader of the Chouteaus, he had camped with the Omahas, and knew their tongue and their country. Could such a prize be foregone for any defect of eyesight?
Accustomed to roving with their long rifles and well-filled bullet pouches, nowhere in the world could more suitable heroes have been found for this Homeric journey.