LEWIS AND CLARK, TWO ADVENTURERS IN THE FAR WEST
WILLIAM LEWIS, a nephew of General Washington’s sister Betty, lived near Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful estate in Albemarle County, Virginia. Two years before Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, a boy was born into the Lewis family. This baby was given his mother’s maiden name, Meriwether.
Twenty-five years after writing the Declaration Jefferson became President of the United States and went to live in the still unfurnished White House in the new city of Washington. Then he chose for his secretary Meriwether Lewis, whom he had seen grow up from boyhood. He was such a remarkable young man that later ex-President Jefferson wrote, in a story of the life of his former secretary:
“When only eight years of age, he often went out in the dead of night alone with his dogs into the forest, to hunt the raccoon and opossum (which, seeking their food in the night, can then only be taken), plunging through the winter’s snows and frozen streams in pursuit of his object.
“His talent for seeing things led him to a true knowledge of plants and animals of his own country. At the age of twenty, yielding to the ardor of youth and a passion for more dazzling pursuits, he engaged as a volunteer in a body of militia called out by President Washington. At twenty-three he was promoted to a captaincy and appointed paymaster of his regiment.”
In 1803, President Jefferson, acting for the United States, bought of France, through Napoleon, all the country west of the Mississippi, which LaSalle had claimed and named Louisiana. That vast region was sold for fifteen million dollars, which amounted to only two and a half cents an acre. This act is known as the Louisiana Purchase. The new country, called Louisiana Territory, was an unknown region thousands of miles in extent. Traders had gone up the Missouri River a few hundred miles, and voyagers along the Pacific coast had traded with the Indians at the mouth of the Columbia River; but no one knew much about the wide expanse of territory lying between, or of the rise and course of either of those great rivers. So it was decided that some one should undertake the long and dangerous journey among savage tribes and wild beasts,
