Excerpt from The Story of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark: For Young Readers The exploration of the Mississippi River was accomplished by the French a little more than two hundred years ago. La Salle, in 1682, was the first White man to trace the course of that great stream to the place Where its waters ow into the Gulf of Mexico. Landing upon an island at the mouth of the river, he set up the arms of France, and took possession of the country in the name of King Louis XIV. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE START On Monday, the I4th of May, 1804, at four o'clock of a rainy afternoon, an odd-looking craft slowly entered the current of the Missouri River at the point where it pours its yellow, tumbling tide into the Mississippi. This strange vessel was fifty- five feet long, and was propelled by twenty-two oars. It had also a square sail, which was hoisted when the wind was favorable. In the bow and stern of the boat were little ten-foot decks with cabins beneath. The space between the decks was filled with lockers or boxes, which could be lifted up for a breastwork in case an enemy should attack the boat. Great boxes and bales of goods had been carefully packed below. If we could have looked into these boxes, we should have seen clothes and tools, household goods and utensils, and great quantities of guns and ammunition. There were laced coats, cocked hats, bright feathers, medals, flags, knives, tomahawks, beads, looking-glasses, bright handkerchiefs, paints, gimlets, axes, kettles, mills, and various other things that were supposed to be pleasing to the Indians. At the side of the large boat were two small rowboats. In these and in the larger vessel were woods- men, hunters, guides, servants, and soldiers ? forty-five men in all. One young man was in command. Along the shore two men were leading the hunters' horses. Slowly the boats made their way against the strong current; but to those who watched them from the shore, they were soon out of sight in the mist and rain. A rainy night set in, and the party landed and went into camp only four miles above their starting-place. The river's yellow, sullen flood rolled THE START by them, carrying with it masses of shifting sands and tumbling tree-trunks. There was danger that these tree-trunks might come in contact...

Seaman, Meriwether Lewis's Newfoundland dog, describes Lewis and Clark's expedition, which he accompanied from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean.