FIRST ACROSS THE CONTINENT

The Story of The Exploring Expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6

By Noah Brooks

CONTENTS

Chapter I    A Great Transaction in Land

Chapter II   Beginning a Long Journey

Chapter III   From the Lower to the Upper River

Chapter IV   Novel Experiences among the Indians

Chapter V   From the Tetons to the Mandans

Chapter VI   Winter among the Mandans

Chapter VII   From Fort Mandan to the Yellowstone

Chapter VIII   In the Haunts of Grizzlies and Buffalo

Chapter IX   In the Solitudes of the Upper Missouri

Chapter X   To the Great Falls of the Missouri

Chapter XI   A the Heart of the Continent

Chapter XII   At the Sources of the Missouri

Chapter XIII   From the Minnetarees to the Shoshonees

Chapter XIV   Across the Great Divide

Chapter XV   Down the Pacific Slope

Chapter XVI   Down the Columbia to Tidewater

Chapter XVII   From Tidewater to the Sea

Chapter XVIII   Camping by the Pacific

Chapter XIX   With Faces turned Homeward

Chapter XX   The Last Stage of the Columbia

Chapter XXI   Overland east of the Columbia

Chapter XXII   Camping with the Nez Perces

Chapter XXIII      Crossing the Bitter Root Mountains

Chapter XXIV   The Expedition Subdivided

Chapter XXV   Adventures on the Yellowstone

Chapter XXVI   The End of a Long Journey

Chapter I — A Great Transaction in Land

The people of the young Republic of the United States were greatly astonished, in the summer of 1803, to learn that Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, had sold to us the vast tract of land known as the country of Louisiana. The details of this purchase were arranged in Paris (on the part of the United States) by Robert R. Livingston and James Monroe. The French government was represented by Barbe-Marbois, Minister of the Public Treasury.

The price to be paid for this vast domain was fifteen million dollars. The area of the country ceded was reckoned to be more than one million square miles, greater than the total area of the United States, as the Republic then existed. Roughly described, the territory comprised all that part of the continent west of the Mississippi River, bounded on the north by the British possessions and on the west and south by dominions of Spain. This included the region in which now lie the States of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, parts of Colorado, Minnesota, the States of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, a part of Idaho, all of Montana and Territory of Oklahoma. At that time, the entire population of the region, exclusive of the Indian tribes that roamed over its trackless spaces, was barely ninety thousand persons, of whom forty thousand were negro slaves. The civilized inhabitants were principally French, or descendants of French, with a few Spanish, Germans, English, and Americans.

The purchase of this tremendous slice of territory could not be complete without an approval of the bargain by the United States Senate. Great opposition to this was immediately excited by people in various parts of the Union, especially in New England, where there was a very bitter feeling against the prime mover in this business,—Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States. The scheme was ridiculed by persons who insisted that the region was not only wild and unexplored, but uninhabitable and worthless. They derided "The Jefferson Purchase," as they called it, as a useless piece of extravagance and folly; and, in addition to its being a foolish bargain, it was urged that President Jefferson had no right, under the constitution of the United States, to