The Expansion of the Republic West of the Mississippi: Address at the Dedication of the Historic Monument Erected at Sioux City, Iowa, in ... Explorers and Pioneers of the West, May 30th, - Softcover

Excerpt from The Expansion of the Republic West of the Mississippi: Address at the Dedication of the Historic Monument Erected at Sioux City, Iowa, in Commemoration of the Acquisition of Louisiana and in Honor of the First Explorers and Pioneers of the West, May 30th, A. D., 1901

President Jefferson had in the winter of 1802 conceived the plan of an exploring expedition up the Missouri and across the mountains to the Pacific with the View of scientific investi gation and of opening trade with the Indians, and also of find ing a feasible route for the limited commerce of that day across the continent. He hoped also to divert the fur trade of the Northwest into the hands of Americans. He obtained an ap propriation from Congress of $2, 500, with which he proceeded to organize a company under the leadership of Captains Merri wether Lewis, his private secretary, and William Clark. The details of that expedition are interesting, but are already so well known that there is no occasion to repeat them in this address. Its success was only accomplished by the exercise of all the virtues known to the life of the frontiersman. It required valor, perseverence, mutual trust, self-confidence, vigilance, knowledge of the instincts and characteristics of the savage, inventive resource, endurance, continuous toil, and unlimited courage. The explorers left their camp in Illinois, opposite the mouth of the Missouri, on May 14, 1804, and six teen days from their departure saw the last cabin of the white man, about one hundred miles from the mouth of the river. It was ninety-seven years ago this day that they bade farewell to 'these huts of semi-civilization. Thenceforward for many, many weary months, upward along the endless windings and shifting sandbars of that treacherous river, and through the gorges and over the trackless ridges of confused mountains, and down the unknown streams rushing to the Pacific Ocean, abandoning their old boats and building new, in peril of starva tion, in peril of drowning, in peril of wild beasts and of wilysavages, they pushed their way over flooding waters and path less forests to their desolate destination on an uncharted ocean coast in the far region of the sunset. Every morning found them ignorant where their evening would be. The sun by day and the stars by night were the only familiar things of the visible universe. When in the opening of a second winter sea son they arrived ou the bleak and desolate ocean shore at the mouth of a great river, it was only to encounter the incessant cold rains of winter, the increasing dangers of famine, and the attacks of disease. After four tedious months of waiting beside the deserted waters of the Pacific, hoping vainly for sight of a vessel that should take their homeward messages around Cape Horn, in the third Spring of their expedition they turned their steps again into the continental wilderness on their return (if God should permit it) to the lands of civilization and of expect ant friends.

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