Jesse was coming down from the tent, unrolling something wrapped around a stick. "Well now, well now," he drawled, "where shall I put this?"

"Company, 'tenshun!" barked Uncle d.i.c.k. "Colors pa.s.s!" And all snapped again into the salute while Jesse fastened the Flag into the bow of the _Adventurer, of America_.

"Now we're about all ready," said Jesse, gravely. And he also stood at the salute which good Scouts give the Flag, as a little band of strong men in buckskin had done, not far away, more than a hundred years ago.

CHAPTER IV

THE EARLY ADVENTURERS

"Well, are you all set, fellows?" demanded Uncle d.i.c.k, at last, turning to his young companions and taking a look over the dismantled camp.

"Just about, sir," answered Rob, who always was accepted as the next officer to Uncle d.i.c.k in command.

"Load her down by the head all you can," said the latter, as the boys began storing the remaining duffle aboard.

"Why?" asked Jesse, who always wanted to know reasons.

"I'll tell you. This water is so roily you can't see into it very deep.

It has a lot of snags and sweepers and buried stuff. Now, if she rides with bows high, she slips farther up, say, on a sunken log. If her bow is down a little, she either doesn't slide on, or else she slips on over."

"Oh! I hadn't thought of that."

Uncle d.i.c.k grinned. "Well, maybe I wouldn't, either, if I hadn't been reading my Lewis and Clark _Journal_ all over again. They speak of that very thing. Oh, this is a bad old river, all right. Those men had a hard time."

"But, sir," answered Rob, "if we load too far down by the bow, our stern motors won't take hold so well. We've got to bury them."

"That's true, their weight throws the bow very high. I doubt if we can do much better than have an even keel, but if she'll kick all right, keep her down all you can in front, for if we ever do ride a log, we'll strip off the propellers, and maybe the end of the boat, too. Better be safe than sorry, always."

"They didn't have as good a boat as ours, did they?" John spoke with a good deal of pride as he cast an eye over the long, racy hull of the _Adventurer_, whose model was one evolved for easy travel upstream under oars.

"Well, no, but still they got along, in those days, after their own fashion. You see, they started out with three boats. First was a big keel boat, fifty-five feet long, with twenty-two oars and a big square sail. She drew three feet of water, loaded, and had a ten-foot deck forward, with lockers midship, which they could stack up for a breastworks against Indian attacks, if they had to. Oh, she was quite a ship, all right.

"Then they had a large red perogue--must have been something like ours, a rangy river skiff, built of boards; certainly not like the little cypress dugouts they call 'peewoogs' in Louisiana.

"Now they had a third boat, the 'white peroque,' they spell it. It was smaller, carrying six oars. The red skiff carried the eight French _voyageurs_----"

"We ought to have all their names, those fellows," said Frank.

"Well, write them down--I've got the _Journal_ handy. Here Captain Clark gives them, as they were set into squads, May 26th, far up the river.

You see, they were a military party--there were twenty-nine on the official rolls as volunteers, not mentioning Captains Lewis and Clark, or York, Captain Clark's negro body servant, who all traveled on the big boat:

"'Orderly Book: Lewis.

Detachment Orders _May 26th, 1804._

The Commanding Officers Direct, that the three Squads under the command of Sergt{s.} Floyd, Ordway and Pryor, heretofore forming two messes each, shall untill further orders const.i.tute three messes only, the same being altered and organized as follows (viz:)

Serg{t.} Charles Floyd Serg{t.} Nathaniel Pryor _Privates_ _Privates_ Hugh McNeal George Gibson Patric Ga.s.s George Shannon Reuben Fields John Shields John B. Thompson John Collins John Newman Joseph Whitehouse Francis Rivet and Peter Wiser (French) Peter Crusat and Joseph Fields Francis Labuche

Serg{t.} John Ordway Patroon, Baptist _Privates_ Deschamps William Bratton _Engages_ John Collen Etienne Mabbauf Moses B. Reed (Soldier) Paul Primant Alexander Willard Charles Hebert William Warner Baptist La Jeunesse Silas Goodrich Peter Pinant John Potts and Peter Roi and Hugh Hall Joseph Collin

Corp{l.} Richard Warvington _Privates_ Robert Frazier John Boleye John Dame Ebinezer Tuttle and Isaac White

"'The Commanding Officers further direct that the messes of Serg{ts.} Floyd, Ordway, and Pryor shall untill further orders form the crew of the Batteaux; the Mess of the Patroon La Jeunesse will form the permanent crew of the red Peroque; Corp{l.} Warvington's men forming that of the white Peroque.'

"There it all is, just as Captain Lewis wrote it, capitals and all. How many would it be, Rob--not forgetting the two captains and the negro York, Clark's body servant, who is not mentioned in the list?"

"I make it forty-one names here in the messes," answered Rob, after counting, "or forty-four with the others added. That does not include Chaboneau or the Indian girl, Sacagawea, whom they took on at Mandan."

"No, that's another list. It usually is said there were forty-five in the party at St. Louis. You see the name 'Francis Rivet and (French).'

That would make forty-five if French were a man French and not a Frenchman. But they always spoke of the voyagers as 'the French.'

Anyhow, there's the list of May 26, 1804."

"Maybe they lost a man overboard somewhere," suggested John.

"Not yet. They had a deserter or two, but that was farther up the river, and they caught one of these and gave him a good military tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and expulsion, as we'll see later. But this I suppose we may call the actual party that found our Great West for us. They are the Company of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery."

The three boys looked half in awe as they read over the names of these forgotten men.

"Yes. So there they were," resumed Uncle d.i.c.k, gravely. "And here in the _Journal_ the very first sentence says the party was 'composed of robust, healthy, hardy young men.' Well, that's the sort I've got along with me, what?"

"But Uncle d.i.c.k--Uncle d.i.c.k--" broke in Jesse, excitedly, "your book is all wrong! Just look at the way the spelling is! It's awful. It wasn't that way in the copies we had."

"That's because this is a real and exact copy of what they really did write down," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "Yours must have been one of the rewritten and much-edited volumes. To my mind, that's a crime. Here's the real thing.

"Listen!" he added, suddenly, holding the volume close to him. "Would you like to know something about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and what became of their _Journals_ after they got home? You'd hardly believe it."

"Tell us," said Rob.

Uncle d.i.c.k opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail of the _Adventurer_.

"They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some education, and his mind was very keen. He was the private secretary of President Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not 'regularly educated.' He studied some months in astronomy and other scientific lines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the special purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicott had experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in the woods, the record says.

"Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years the older--thirty-three--while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells better than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever you see anything of the _Journal_ spelled correctly, it is false and spurious--that's not the original, for spelling was the one thing those two fellows couldn't do.

"They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had an elk-skin cover to his book--and that little book disappeared for over one hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distant relatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten years ago.

"At night, by the camp fire, the two officers would write out their field notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson.

Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy the other's notes. Only the originals could make all that plain. And, alas!

not all the original work is known to exist.

"No one seems to have valued the written record of that wonderful trip.

When the young men got to St. Louis on their return, they did try to make a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and they couldn't get a publisher--think of that! But at last they did get an editor, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, he was, of Philadelphia.

"That poor man waded through over one million words of copy in the 'notes' he got hold of at last! But by then President Jefferson was getting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clark was busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was a writer. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered.