II The Knight of the White House
And Meriwether Lewis was ready to start. The night before the Fourth of July he wrote his mother:
“The day after to-morrow I shall set out for the western country. I had calculated on the pleasure of visiting you, but circumstances have rendered it impossible. My absence will probably be equal to fifteen or eighteen months. The nature of this expedition is by no means dangerous. My route will be altogether through tribes of Indians friendly to the United States, therefore I consider the chances of life just as much in my favour as I should conceive them were I to remain at home. The charge of this expedition is honourable to myself, as it is important to my country. For its fatigues I feel myself perfectly prepared, nor do I doubt my health and strength of constitution to bear me through it. I go with the most perfect pre-conviction in my own mind of returning safe, and hope therefore that you will not suffer yourself to indulge any anxiety for my safety,—I will write again on my arrival at Pittsburg. Adieu, and believe me your affectionate son,
Meriwether Lewis.”
The Jefferson girls had returned to their homes. Dolly Madison and Mrs. Gallatin supervised the needle department, having made “housewives” enough to fit out a regiment. Joseph Rapin, the steward, helped Lewis pack his belongings, Secretary Gallatin contributed a map of Vancouver’s sketch of the Columbia mouth, and Madison rendered his parting benediction.
Out of the iron gate in the high rock wall in front of the White House Meriwether went,—fit emblem of the young Republic, slim and lithe, immaculate in new uniform and three-cornered chapeau, his sunny thick-braided queue falling over the high-collared coat,—to meet the Potomac packet for Harper’s Ferry. All around were uncut forests, save the little clearing of Washington, and up the umbrageous hills stretched an endless ocean of tree-tops.
The wind blew up the Potomac, fluttering the President’s gray locks. “If a superior force should be arrayed against your passage, return, Meriwether,” was the anxious parting word. “To your own discretion must be left the degree of danger you may risk.”
But Meriwether had no fears.
“Should you reach the Pacific Ocean,—endeavour to learn if there be any port within your reach frequented by sea-vessels of any nation, and to send two of your trusted people back by sea, with a copy of your notes. Should you be of opinion that the return of your party by the way they went will be dangerous, then ship the whole, and return by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope. As you will be without money, clothes or provisions, I give you this open letter of credit authorising you to draw on the Executive of the United States or any of its officers in any part of the world. Our consuls at Batavia in Java, at the Isles of France and Bourbon, and at the Cape of Good Hope will be able to supply you necessities by drafts on us.”
For where in the world the Missouri led, no man then knew!
“I have sometimes thought of sending a ship around to you,” said Jefferson, “but the Spaniards would be certain to gobble it, and we are in trouble enough with them already over this Louisiana Purchase.”
Too well Lewis knew the delicacy of the situation. Spain was on fire over the treachery of Napoleon. “France has no right to alienate Louisiana!” was the cry from Madrid. But what could she do? Nothing but fume, delay, threaten,—Napoleon was master.
“Under present circumstances,” continued the President, “I consider futile all effort to get a ship to your succour on those shores. Spain would be only too glad to strike a blow. But there must be trade, there is trade,—all through Adams’s administration the Russians were complaining of Yankee skippers on that northwest coast.
“Russia has aided us, I may call the Emperor my personal friend.” With pardonable pride the President thought of the bust of Alexander over his study door at Monticello. “Though Catherine did send poor Ledyard back, Alexander has proved himself true, and in case any Russian ship touches those shores you are safe, or English, or American. This letter of credit will carry you through.
“And above all, express my philanthropic regard for the Indians. Humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts.”
And after Lewis was fairly started, the President sent on as a great secret, “I have received word from Paris that Mr. Broughton, one of the companions of Captain Vancouver, went up Columbia River one hundred miles in December, 1792. He stopped at a point he named Vancouver. Here the river Columbia is still a quarter of a mile wide. From this point Mt. Hood is seen twenty leagues distant, which is probably a dependency of the Stony Mountains. Accept my affectionate salutations.”
On the Fourth of July the same hand that drew up the Declaration of Independence had drawn for Meriwether Lewis a Letter of Credit, authorising him to purchase anything he needed on the credit of the United States in any part of the world. Was Jefferson thinking of those days when George Rogers Clark gave drafts on New Orleans for the conquest of Illinois? This again was another venture into a dark unwritten West.
The next day Lewis “shot all his guns” at Harper’s Ferry, examined extra locks, knives, tomahawks, accoutrements that had been manufactured at his special direction. The waggoner from Philadelphia came jolting by with Indian presents, astronomical apparatus, and tents on the way to Pittsburg.
Pittsburg? A cloud of smoke hung even then over the embryotic city. Two thousand miles inland, it already had a flourishing ship-yard. Several large vessels lay on the stocks and builders were hammering day and night.
“The ‘Louisiana,’ three hundred tons, is waiting for the next rise of the river,” said a strapping tar. “In May a fleet of schooners went out to the Caribbees. You are too late for this summer’s freshet.”
“Come, gentlemen, gentlemen all,
Ginral Sincleer shall remem-ber-ed be,
For he lost thirteen hundred me-en all
In the Western Tari-to-ree.”
Captain Lewis took a second look at the singer,—it was George Shannon standing on the dock.
“Why, Captain Lewis! Where are you going?”
George was an old friend of Meriwether’s, and yet but a lad of seventeen. His father, one of those “ragged Continentals” that marched on Yorktown, had emigrated to the far Ohio.
Jane Shannon was a typical pioneer mother. She spun, wove, knit, made leggings of skins, and caps and moccasins, but through multitudinous duties found time to teach her children. “To prepare them for college,” she said, “that is my dream. I’d live on hoe-cake for ever to give them a chance.” Every one of her six boys inherited that mother’s spirit, every one attained distinction.
At fourteen George was sent to his mother’s relatives on the Monongahela to school. Here he met Lewis, forted in that winter camp. The gallant Virginian captured the boy’s fancy,—he became his model, his ideal.
“And can you go?” asked Captain Lewis.
“Go? I will accompany you to the end of the world, Captain Lewis,” answered George Shannon. “There is no time for mails,—I know I have my parent’s consent. And the pay, that will take me to college!” Shannon enlisted on the spot, and was Lewis’s greatest comfort in those trying days at Pittsburg.
The boat-builders were drunkards. “I spent most of my time with the workmen,” wrote Lewis to the President, “but neither threats nor persuasion were sufficient to procure the completion before the 31st of August.” Loading the boat the instant it was done, they set out at four o’clock in the morning, with John Collins of Maryland, and George Gibson, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, and Peter Wiser, of Pennsylvania, recruits that had been ordered from Carlisle. Peter Wiser is believed to have been a descendant of that famous Conrad Weiser who gave his life to pacifying the Indian.
By this time the water was low. “On board my boat opposite Marietta, Sept. 13,” Lewis writes,—“horses or oxen—I find the most efficient sailors in the present state of navigation,” dragging the bateaux over shallows of drift and sandbars.
And yet that same Spring, when the water was high, Marietta had sent out the schooners “Dorcas and Sally,” and the “Mary Avery,” one hundred and thirty tons, with cheers and firing of cannon. When Lewis passed, a three-mast brig of two hundred and fifty tons and a smaller one of ninety tons were on the point of being finished to launch the following Spring, with produce for Philadelphia.
George Shannon was a handsome boy, already full grown but with the beardless pink and white of youth. His cap would not fit down over his curls, but lifted like his own hopes. Nothing would start the boats at daylight like his jolly, rollicking
“Blow, ye winds of morning,
Blow, blow, blow,”
rolling across the tints of sunrise. His cheeks glowed, his blue eyes shone to meet the wishes of his captain.
Past the fairy isle of Blennerhassett with its stately mansion half-hid behind avenues of Lombardy poplar and tasteful shrubbery, Captain Lewis came on down to Fort Washington, Cincinnati, where brigs had lately taken on cargoes and sailed to the West Indies.
Bones? Of course Lewis wanted to look at bones and send some to the learned President. Dr. Goforth of Cincinnati was sinking a pit at the Big Bone Lick for remains of the mammoth, and might not mammoths be stalking abroad in all that great land of the West? Mystery, mystery,—the very air was filled with mystery.