As Jefferson placed that letter in the hands of Monroe he added:

"In Europe nothing but Europe is seen. But this little event, of France's possessing herself of Louisiana,—this speck which now appears an invisible point on the horizon,—is the embryo of a tornado.

"I must secure the port of New Orleans and the mastery of the navigation of the Mississippi.

"We must have peace. The use of the Mississippi is indispensable. We must purchase New Orleans."

"You are aware of the sensibility of our Western citizens," Madison was writing to Madrid. "To them the Mississippi is everything. It is the Hudson, the Delaware, the Potomac, and all the navigable rivers of the Atlantic States, formed into one."

But Napoleon's soldiers were dying at San Domingo, the men with whom he would have colonised Louisiana. At that moment the flint and steel of France and England struck, and the spark meant—war. England stood ready to seize the mouth of the Mississippi.

After the solemnities of Easter Sunday at St. Cloud, April 10, 1803, Napoleon summoned two of his ministers.

"I know the full value of Louisiana!" he began with vehement passion, walking up and down the marble parlour. "A few lines of treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me," the First Consul shook his finger menacingly, "it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it, than to those to whom I wish to deliver it. The English have successively taken from France, Canada, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the richest portions of Asia. They shall not have the Mississippi which they covet. They have twenty ships of war in the Gulf of Mexico, they sail over those seas as sovereigns. The conquest of Louisiana would be easy. I have not a moment to lose in putting it out of their reach. I know not whether they are not already there. I think of ceding it to the United States. They only ask one town of me in Louisiana but I already consider the colony as entirely lost, and it appears to me that in the hands of this growing power it will be more useful to the policy and even to the commerce of France, than if I should attempt to keep it."

He turned to Barbé-Marbois, who had served as Secretary of the French Legation at Philadelphia during the whole war of the American Revolution.

"We should not hesitate to make a sacrifice of that which is about slipping from us," said Barbé-Marbois. "War with England is inevitable; shall we be able to defend Louisiana? Can we restore fortifications that are in ruins? If, Citizen Consul, you, who have by one of the first acts of your government made sufficiently apparent your intention of giving this country to France, now abandon the idea of keeping it, there is no person that will not admit that you yield to necessity."

Far into the night they talked, so late that the ministers slept at St. Cloud.

At daybreak Napoleon summoned Barbé-Marbois. "Read me the dispatches from London."

"Sire," returned the Secretary, looking over the papers, "naval and military preparations of every kind are making with extraordinary rapidity."

Napoleon leaped to his feet and strode again the marble floor.

"Irresolution and deliberation are no longer in season. I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I will cede, but the whole colony without reservation. I know the price of what I abandon. I renounce it with regret. To attempt to retain it would be folly. I direct you to negotiate this affair with the United States. Do not even await the arrival of Mr. Monroe; have an interview this very day with Mr. Livingstone; but I require a great deal of money for this war, and I would not like to commence it with new contributions. I want fifty millions, and for less than that sum I will not treat. To-morrow you shall have your full powers."

The minister waited.

"Mr. Monroe is on the point of arriving," continued Napoleon. "Neither this minister, nor his colleague, is prepared for a decision which goes infinitely beyond anything they are about to ask of us. Begin by making them overtures, without any subterfuge. Acquaint me, hour by hour, of your progress."

"What will you pay for all Louisiana?" bluntly asked Barbé-Marbois that day of the astonished Livingstone.

"All Louisiana! New Orleans is all I ask for," answered Livingstone. So long had Talleyrand trifled and deceived, the American found himself distrustful of these French diplomatists.

"But I offer the province," said Barbé-Marbois.

Surprised, doubtful, Livingstone listened. "I have not the necessary powers."

The next day Monroe arrived.

"There must be haste or the English will be at New Orleans," said Barbé-Marbois. "How much will you pay for the whole province?"

"The English? Fifteen millions," answered the Americans.

"Incorporate Louisiana as soon as possible into your Union," said Napoleon, "give to its inhabitants the same rights, privileges, and immunities as to other citizens of the United States.

"And let them know that we separate ourselves from them with regret; let them retain for us sentiments of affection; and may their common origin, descent, language, and customs perpetuate the friendship."

The papers were drawn up and signed in French and in English.

"We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our lives!" exclaimed Livingstone, as he and Barbé-Marbois and Monroe arose and shook hands across the document.

"This accession of territory strengthens for ever the power of the United States," said Napoleon, coming in to look at the treaty. And as he affixed that signature, "Napoleon," he smiled,—"I have just given to England a maritime rival, that sooner or later will humble her pride."

And on that day the Mississippi was opened, to be closed by a foreign power no more for ever.

But no sooner had Napoleon parted with Louisiana than he began to repent. "Hasten," the ministers warned Jefferson, "the slightest delay may lose us the country."

The word reached America.

"Jefferson—bought New Orleans? bought the Mississippi? bought the entire boundless West?"

Men gasped, then cheered. Tumultuous excitement swept the land. On July 3, 1803, an infant Republic hugging the Atlantic, on July 4, a world power grasping the Pacific!

"A bargain!" cried the Republicans.

"Unconstitutional!" answered the Federalists.

"The East will become depopulated."

"Fifteen millions! Fifteen millions for that wilderness! Why, that would be tons of money! Waggon loads of silver five miles long. We have not so much coin in the whole country!"

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 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."

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

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.

III
RECRUITING FOR OREGON

"Now that I have accepted President Jefferson's proposal to be associated with Captain Lewis in this expedition, it will oblige me to accept brother Jonathan's offer of ten thousand dollars cash for Mulberry Hill," William Clark was saying at Louisville. "That will help out brother George on his military debts, satisfy his claimants, and save him from ruin."

At the time of sale the old home was occupied by General Clark and William Clark, and their sister Fanny and her children. The departure of William for the Pacific broke up and dispersed the happy family.

The General went back to the Point of Rock, fifty feet above the dashing Ohio. That water was the lowest ever known now, men could walk across on the rocks. Three or four locust trees shaded the cabin, now painted white, and an orchard of peach and cherry blossomed below. Negro Ben and his wife Venus, and Carson and Cupid, lived back of the house and cultivated a few acres of grain and garden.

All of Clark's old soldiers remained loyal and visited the Point of Rock, and every year an encampment of braves, Indian chiefs whom he had subdued, came for advice and to partake of his hospitality.

Grand and lonely, prematurely aged at fifty-one when he should have been in his prime, General Clark sat overlooking the Falls when Captain Lewis pulled his bateaux into the Bear Grass.

Captain Clark and nine young men of Kentucky were waiting for the boat,—William Bratton, a blacksmith, formerly of Virginia, and John Shields, gunsmith, the Tubal Cain of the expedition, John Coalter, who had been a ranger with Kenton, the famous Shields brothers, Reuben and James, William Warner and Joseph Whitehouse, all experts with the rifle, Charles Floyd, son of that Charles Floyd that rode with his brother from the death-stroke of Big Foot, and Nathaniel Pryor, his cousin.

Twenty years had passed since that fatal April morning when John Floyd was laid a corpse at the feet of Jane Buchanan. That posthumous child, ushered so sadly into the world, John Floyd the younger, now a handsome youth, was eager to go with his cousins—but an unexpected illness held him back—to become a member of Congress and Governor of Virginia.

And York, of course York. Had he not from childhood obeyed John Clark's command, "Look after your young master"? With highest elation York assisted in the preparation, furbished up his gun, and prepared to "slay dem buffaloes."

"An interpreter is my problem now," said Captain Lewis, "a man familiar with Indians, trustworthy, and skilled in tongues."

"I think my brother will know the man,—he has had wide experience in that line," said William; and so down to the Point of Rock the Captains betook themselves to visit George Rogers Clark.

"Dignity sat still upon his countenance and the commanding look of Washington," wrote a chronicler of that day.

"An interpreter?" mused General Clark. Then turning to his brother, "Do you remember Pierre Drouillard, the Frenchman that saved Kenton? He was a man of tact and influence with the Indians, and, although he wore the red coat, a man of humanity. He interpreted for me at Fort McIntosh and at the Great Miami. He comes with Buckongahelas."

William Clark remembered.

"That old Frenchman has a son, George, chip of the old block, brought up with the Indians and educated at a mission. He is your man,—at St. Louis, I think."

"Always demand of the Indians what you want, William, that is the secret. Never let them think you fear them. Great things have been effected by a few men well conducted. Who knows what fortune may do for you?" It was the self-same saying with which twenty-four years before he had started to Vincennes. "Here are letters to some of my old friends at St. Louis and Kaskaskia," added the General.

All the negroes were out to weep over York, whom they feared to see no more,—old York and Rose, Nancy and Julia, Jane, Cupid and Harry, from the scattered home at Mulberry Hill.

General Jonathan Clark and Major Croghan were there, the richest men in Kentucky, and General Jonathan's daughters who stitched their samplers now at Mulberry Hill; and Lucy, from Locust Grove, the image of William, "with face almost too strong for a woman," some said. All the city knew her, a miracle of benevolence and duty, and by her side the little son, George Croghan, destined to hand on the renown of his fathers.

William Clark's last word was for Fanny, a widow with children. "It is my desire that she should stay with Lucy at Locust Grove until my return," said the paternal brother, kissing her pale cheek.

"And I want Johnny with me at the Point of Rock," added the lonely General, who, if he loved any one, it was little John O'Fallon, the son of his sister Fanny.

"Bring on your plunder!"

The Kentuckians could be recognised by their call as they helped the bateaux over the rapids and launched them below. George Rogers Clark stood on the Point of Rock, waving a last farewell, watching them down the river.

While Captain Clark went on down the Ohio, and engaged a few men at Fort Massac, Captain Lewis followed the old Vincennes "trace" to Kaskaskia.

In that very September, Sergeant John Ordway, in Russell Bissell's company, was writing home to New Hampshire:

"Kaskaskia is a very old town of about two hundred houses and ruins of many more. We lie on the hill in sight of the town, and have built a garrison here.—If Betty Crosby will wait for my return I may perhaps join hands with her yet. We have a company of troops from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, here."

Captain Lewis came up to the garrison. Out of twenty volunteers only three possessed the requisite qualifications. But Sergeant Ordway was one, Robert Frazer of Vermont, another, and Thomas P. Howard, of Massachusetts, the third.

Oppressed and anxious in mind over the difficulty of finding suitable men, Captain Lewis was one morning riding along when into the high road there ran out a short, strong, compact, broad-chested and heavy-limbed man, lean, sprightly, and quick of motion, in the dress of a soldier. His lively eye instantly caught that of Captain Lewis. Perceiving that the soldier was evidently bent on seeing him, Lewis checked his horse and paused.

With military salute the man began: "Me name is Patrick Gass, sorr, and I want to go with you to the Stony Mountings, but my Commander, sorr, here at the barracks, will not consint. He siz, siz he, 'You are too good a carpenter, Pat, and I need you here.'"

His build, his manner, and the fact that Pat was a soldier and a carpenter, was enough. Men must be had, and here was a droll one, the predestined wit of the expedition.

"I knew you, sorr, when I saw your horse ferninst the trees. I recognised a gintleman and an officer. I saw you whin I met Gineral Washington at Carlisle out with throops to suppriss the Whiskey Rebillion. I met Gineral Washington that day, and I sid, siz I, 'Gineral, I'm a pathriot mesilf and I'll niver risist me gover'm'nt, but I love ould Bourbon too well to inlist agin the whiskey byes.'"

"And have you never served in the field?" roared Lewis, almost impatient.

"Ah, yis; whin Adams was Prisident, I threw down me jackplane and inlisted under Gineral Alexander Hamilton, but there was no war, so thin I inlisted under Major Cass."

Patrick glanced back and saw his Captain. "Hist ye! shoulder-sthraps are comin'!"

Lewis laughed. "Go and get ready, Patrick; I'll settle with your Captain." And Patrick, bent on a new "inlistment" and new adventures, hied him away to pack his belongings. For days in dreams he was already navigating the Missouri, already he saw the blue Pacific. As he told the boys afterward, "And I, siz I to mesilf, 'Patrick, let us to the Pecific!' Me Captain objicted, but I found out where Captain Lewis was sthopping and sthole away and inlisted annyhow."

Captain Lewis had made no mistake. Patrick Gass, cheerful, ever brave, was a typical frontiersman. His had been a life of constant roving. Starting from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, when he was five years old, the family crossed the Alleghanies on packhorses. On the first horse was the mother, with the baby and all the table furniture and cooking utensils; on another were packed the provisions, the plough-irons and farming utensils; the third was rigged with a packsaddle and two large cradles of hickory withes. In the centre of these sat little Pat on one side and his sister on the other, well laced in with bed-clothes so that only their heads stuck out.

Along the edges of precipices they went,—if a horse stumbled he would have thrown them hundreds of feet below. On these horses they forded mountain streams, swollen with melting snows and spring rains. Daily were hairbreadth escapes, the horses falling, or carried down with the current and the family barely snatched from drowning.

The journey was made in April when the nights were cold and the mother could not sleep. There was so much to do for the children. As the tireless father kept guard under the glow of the campfire, little Patrick's unfailing good-night was, "Hist, child! the Injuns will come and take you to Detroit!"

There were several of these moves in his childhood. Here and there he caught glimpses of well-housed, well-fed hirelings of the British army watching like eagles the land of the patriot army. At last they turned up at what is now Wellsburg in West Virginia. While yet a boy Gass was apprenticed to a carpenter and worked on a house for a man by the name of Buchanan, while around him played "little Jimmy," the president-to-be. "Little Jimmy was like his mother," said Gass.

In December Lewis and Clark dropped down before the white-washed walls and gray stone parapets of the old French town of St. Louis. With fierce consequential air a Spanish soldier flourished his sword indicating the place to land.

"We will spend the winter at Charette, the farthest point of settlement." That was the town of Daniel Boone.

But the Governor, Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus, barred the way.

"By the general policy of my government I am obliged to prevent strangers from passing through Spanish territory until I have received official notice of its transfer."

Nothing could be done but to go into winter camp opposite the mouth of the Missouri, just outside of his jurisdiction, and discipline the men, making ready for an early spring start.

Beyond the big river was foreign land. Did the Spaniard still hope to stay?

IV
THE FEUD IS ENDED

Hark! Is that the boom of distant cannon? The American troops are falling into line outside the walls of New Orleans on this 20th day of December, 1803. The tri-colour of France floats on the flagstaff; the sky shines irradiant, like the "suns of Napoleon."

It is high noon; another salute shakes the city. "Ho, warder, lower the drawbridge!"

With chain-pulleys rattling down goes the bridge, never to be lifted again. The fortress bell strikes its last peal under the flag of France, or Spain. With thundering tread American dragoons file under the portcullis of the Tchoupitoulas gate, followed by cannoneers and infantry in coonskin caps and leathern hunting shirts.

Curiously these sons of the forest look upon the old world forts and donjons of masonry. The moat is filled with stagnant water. The ramparts of New Orleans are filled with soldiers from Havre and Madrid. The windows and balconies are filled with beautiful women weeping, weeping to see the barbarians.

Laussat was looking for Napoleon's soldiers, not a sale. Pale as death he hands over the keys. Slowly the tri-coloured flag of France at the summit of the flagstaff in the plaza descends. Slowly the star-spangled banner uplifts; half-way the two linger in one another's folds.

As the flags embrace, another boom, and answering guns reply from ship and fort and battery around the crescent of New Orleans. The flags are parting,—it is a thrilling moment; up, up, steadily mounts the emblem of America and bursts on the breeze.

The band breaks into "Hail, Columbia," amid the roar of artillery and shouting of backwoodsmen. The map of France in the new world has become the map of the United States.

"The flag! the flag!" Veterans of the French army receive the descending tri-colour, and followed by a procession of uncovered heads bear it with funereal tread to Laussat.

"We have wished to give to France a last proof of the affection which we will always retain for her," with trembling lip speaks the flag-bearer. "Into your hands we deposit this symbol of the tie which has again transiently connected us with her."

And Laussat with answering tears replies, "May the prosperity of Louisiana be eternal."

But of all in New Orleans on this historic day, none fear, none tremble like Sister Infelice, in the cloister of the Ursulines. She seems to hear the very sabres beat on the convent wall. When a tropic hurricane sweeps up the gulf at night she falls on the cold stone floor and covers her head, as if the very lightning might reveal that form she loved so well, the great Virginia colonel. To Infelice he was ever young, ever the heroic saviour of St. Louis. That time could have changed him had never occurred to her,—he was a type of immortal youth.

Infelice never speaks of these things, not even to her father confessor; it is something too deep, too sacred, a last touch of the world hid closer even than her heart. And yet she believes he is coming,—that is the cause of all this tumult and cannonading. Her hero, her warrior wants her, and none can stay him.

And when the cession is fairly over and he comes not, the disappointment prostrates her utterly. "He cares, he cares no more! The Virginians? Did you say the Virginians had come?"

From that bed of delirium the Mother Superior of the Ursuline house sent for the Mayor.

"I beg to be allowed to retire with my sisterhood to some point under the protection of His Catholic Majesty of Spain."

"Going!" exclaimed Monsieur le Mayor of New Orleans. "For why? You shall not be disturbed, you shall have full protection."

"Do you stand for France, revolution and infidelity?" gasped the aged mother, denouncing the Mayor.

The people pled, the Mayor went down on his knees. "Do not abandon our schools and our children!" But the Mother Superior was firm.

Twenty-two years had the Donna De Leyba been a nun. The old official records are lost, but out of twenty-five nuns in the establishment we know the sixteen of Spain went away.

All New Orleans gathered to see them depart. When the gun sounded on Whitsunday Eve, sixteen women in black came forth, heavily veiled. The convent gardens were thronged with pupils, slaves knelt by the wayside, the Mayor and populace followed until they embarked on the ship and sailed to Havana.

The old Ursuline convent of New Orleans is now the archbishop's palace. Sister Infelice is gone, but near some old cloister of Cuba we know her ashes must now be reposing. Henceforth the gates were open. The wall decayed, the moat was filled, and over it to-day winds the handsomest boulevard in America.

The flatboatmen came home with romantic tales of the land of the palmetto and orange, luxuries unknown in the rigorous north. The tide of emigration so long held in check burst its bounds and deluged Louisiana.

Among other Americans that settled at New Orleans was the Fighting Parson. His son Charles Mynn Thruston had married Fanny.

V
THE CESSION OF ST. LOUIS

"Glass we must have, and quicksilver. Wife, let me have the mirror."

The Madame threw up her hands. "The precious pier glass my dead mother brought over from France? What shall we have left?"

"But Rosalie, this is an emergency for the government. The men must have thermometers, and barometers, and I have no glass."

"The President will pay for the glass, Madame; he would consider it the highest use to which it could be put," said Captain Lewis.

"And you shall have a better one by the next ship that sails around from France."

So as usual to everything the Doctor wished, the good woman consented. None had more unbounded faith in Dr. Saugrain's gift of miracles than his own wife.

The huge glass, that had reflected Parisian scenes for a generation before coming to the wilds of America, was now lifted from its gilt frame and every particle of quicksilver carefully scraped from the back. Then the pier plate was shattered and the fragments gathered, bit by bit, into the Doctor's mysterious crucible, making the country people watch and wonder.

So long had Meriwether Lewis been with Jefferson, that he had imbibed the same eager desire to know, to understand. When he met with Doctor Saugrain it was like a union of kindred spirits. Saugrain, the pupil, friend, and disciple of the great Franklin, was often with the American scientist when he experimented with his kites, and drew down lightning to charge his Leyden jars. Three times Dr. Saugrain came to America, twice as guest of Dr. Franklin, before he settled down as physician to the Spanish garrison at St. Louis in 1800. With him he brought all his scientific lore, the latest of the most advanced city in the world. When all the world depended on flint and steel, Paris and Dr. Saugrain made matches. He made matches for Lewis and Clark that were struck on the Columbia a generation before Boston or London made use of the secret.

Bitterly the cheerful, sprightly little Royalist in curls lamented the French Revolution. "Oh, the guillotine! the guillotine! My own uncle, Dr. Guillotine, invented that instrument to save pain, not to waste life. But when he saw his own friends led up to the knife, distressed at its abuse he died in despair!"

Sufficient reason had Dr. Saugrain to be loyal to Louis XVI. For more than two hundred years his people had been librarians, book-binders, and printers for the King. Litterateurs and authors were the Saugrains for six continuous generations, and out of their scientific and historical publications came the bent of Dr. Antoine François Saugrain of St. Louis. But when the Bastile was stormed, Saugrain left France for ever. An emigré, a royalist, with others of the King's friends he came to the land that honoured Louis XVI.

Between the Rue de l'Église and the Rue des Granges, at the extreme southwestern limit of the old village of St. Louis, stood Dr. Saugrain's modest residence of cement with a six-foot stone wall around it and extensive gardens. In his "arboretum" Dr. Saugrain was making a collection of the most attractive native trees he found around St. Louis, and some there, imported from Paris, cast their green shadows on the swans of his swimming pond, an old French fancy for his park.

In this happy home with its great library, Captain Lewis became a welcome guest in that winter of 1803-4 while waiting for the cession. Under the Doctor he pursued his scientific studies, medicine, surgery, electricity, for not even Dr. Barton in Philadelphia could surpass the bright little Frenchman so strangely transplanted here in this uttermost border.

The Doctor's taper fingers were always stained with acids and sulphur; busy ever with blowpipe and crucible, he fashioned tubes, filled in quicksilver, graduated cases, and handed out barometers and thermometers that amazed the frontier.

"Great Medicine!" cried the Indians when he gave them a shock of electricity. How Dr. Saugrain loved to turn his battery and electrify the door-knobs when those bothersome Indians tried to enter! Or, "Here, White Hair, is a shilling. You can have it if you will take it out." The Osage chieftain plunges his arm into a crock of electrified water to dash off howling with affright.

With intense interest Captain Lewis stood by while the chemist-physician dipped sulphur-tipped splints of wood into phosphorus, and lo! his little matches glowed like Lucifer's own. "You can make the sticks yourself," he said. "I will seal the phosphorus in these small tin boxes for safety."

"And have you any kine-pox? You must surely carry kine-pox, for I hear those Omahas have died like cattle in a plague."

"President Jefferson particularly directed me to carry some kine-pox virus," replied Captain Lewis, "but really, what he gave me seems to have lost its virtue. I wrote him so from Cincinnati, but fear it will be too late to supply the deficiency."

Out of his medicine chest in the corner, the little Doctor brought the tiny vials. "Sent me from Paris. Carry it, explain it to the Indians, use it whenever you can,—it will save the life of hundreds." And other medicines, simple remedies, the good savant prescribed, making up a chest that became invaluable in after days.

Other friends were Gratiot and the Chouteaus, Auguste and Pierre. It was Auguste that had planned the fortifications of St. Louis, towers and bastions, palisades, demilunes, scarps, counter-scarps, and sally ports, only finished in part when the city was handed over.

Long since had Carondelet offered rewards to the traders of St. Louis to penetrate to the Pacific. Already the Chouteau boats had reached the Mandan towns, but freely they gave every information to the American Captain.

"I send you herewith enclosed," wrote Lewis to the President, "some slips of the Osage plum and apple. Mr. Charles Gratiot, a gentleman of this place, has promised that he would with pleasure attend to the orders of yourself, or any of my acquaintances who may think proper to write him on the subject. I obtained the cuttings now sent you from the gardens of Mr. Peter Chouteau, who resided the greater portion of his time for many years with the Osage nation.

"The Osage might with a little attention be made to form an ornamental and useful hedge. The fruit is a large oval plum, of a pale yellow colour and exquisite flavour. An opinion prevails among the Osages that the fruit is poisonous, though they acknowledge they have never tasted it."

The leaders of all the French colonies on the Mississippi were gentlemen of education and talent. They saw what the cession meant, and hailed it with welcome. But the masses, peaceable, illiterate, with little property and less enterprise, contented, unambitious, saw not the future of that great valley where their fathers had camped in the days of La Salle. Frank, open, joyous, unsuspecting, wrapped in the pleasures of the passing hour, they cared little for wealth and less for government provided they were not worried with its cares. Their children, their fruits and flowers, the dance—happy always were the Creole habitants provided only they heard the fiddle string. Retaining all the suavity of his race, the roughest hunter could grace a ballroom with the carriage and manners of a gentleman.

Meanwhile Captain Clark was drilling the men at camp after the fashion of Wayne. Other soldiers had been engaged at Fort Massac and elsewhere,—Silas Goodrich, Richard Windsor, Hugh Hall, Alexander Willard, and John B. Thompson, a surveyor of Vincennes.

Never had St. Louis such days! Hurry, hurry and bustle in the staid and quiet town that had never before known any greater excitement than a church festival or a wedding,—never, that is, since those days of war when George Rogers Clark saved and when he threatened.

But now Lewis and Clark made a deep impression on the villagers of the power and dignity of the United States Government. Out of their purchases every merchant hoped to make a fortune; the eager Frenchmen displayed their wares,—coffee, gunpowder, and blankets, tea at prices fabulous in deerskin currency and sugar two dollars a pound.

But Lewis already had made up his outfit,—richly laced coats, medals and flags from Jefferson himself, knives, tomahawks, and ornaments for chiefs, barrels of beads, paints and looking-glasses, bright-coloured three-point Mackinaw blankets, a vision to dazzle a child or an Indian, who is also a child.

George Drouillard was found, the skilled hunter. There was a trace of Indian in Drouillard; his French fathers and grandfathers had trapped along the streams of Ohio and Canada since before the days of Pontiac, in fact, with Cadillac they had helped to build Detroit.

Every part of America was represented in that first exploring expedition,—Lewis, the kinsman of Washington, and Clark from the tidewater cavaliers of old Virginia, foremost of the fighting stock that won Kentucky and Illinois, Puritan Yankees from New England, Quaker Pennsylvanians from Carlisle, descendants of landholders in the days of Penn, French interpreters and adventurers whose barkentines had flashed along our inland lakes and streams for a hundred years, and finally, York, the negro, forerunner of his people.

Cruzatte and Labiche, canoemen, were of old Kaskaskia. Pierre Cruzatte was near-sighted and one-eyed, but what of that? A trusted trader of the Chouteaus, he had camped with the Omahas, and knew their tongue and their country. Could such a prize be foregone for any defect of eyesight?

Accustomed to roving with their long rifles and well-filled bullet pouches, nowhere in the world could more suitable heroes have been found for this Homeric journey.

News of the sale had reached St. Louis while Captain Lewis was struggling with those builders at Pittsburg.

"Sacre! Diable!" exclaimed the French. Some loved France, some clung to Spain, some shook their heads. "De country? We never discuss its affaires. Dat ees de business of de Commandante."

The winter of 1803-4 was very severe. In November the ice began running and no one could cross until February. Then Captain Amos Stoddard, at Kaskaskia with his troops, sent a letter to Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus by a sergeant going on business to Captain Lewis.

On top of the hill a double stockade of logs set vertically, the space between filled with dirt, a two-story log building with small windows and a round stone tower with a pointed cap of stone,—that was the fort where the Spanish soldiers waited.

Down below, inhabitants in blue blanket capotes and blue kerchiefs on their heads, now and then in red toque or a red scarf to tie up their trousers, wandered in the three narrow lanes that were the streets of St. Louis, waiting. Before them flowed the yellow-stained, eddy-spotted Mississippi, behind waved a sea of prairie grass uninterrupted by farm or village to the Rockies.

Spring blossomed. Thickets of wild plum, cherry, wild crab-apples, covered the prairie. Vanilla-scented locust blooms were shaking honey-dew on the wide verandas of the old St. Louis houses, when early in the morning of May 9, American troops crossed the river from Cahokia, and Clark's men from the camp formed in line with fife and drum, and colours flying. At their head Major Amos Stoddard of Boston and Captain Meriwether Lewis of Virginia led up to the Government House.

Black Hawk was there to see his Spanish Father. He looked out.

"Here comes your American Father," said the Commandant De Lassus.

"I do not want two Fathers!" responded Black Hawk.

Dubiously shaking his head as the Americans approached, Black Hawk and his retinue flapped their blankets out of one door as Stoddard and Captain Lewis entered the other.

Away to his boats Black Hawk sped, pulling for dear life up stream to his village at Rock Island. And with him went Singing Bird, the bride of Black Hawk.

"Strange people have taken St. Louis," said the Hawk to his Sacs. "We shall never see our Spanish Father again."

A flotilla of Frenchmen came up from Kaskaskia,—Menard, Edgar, Francis Vigo, and their friends. Villagers left their work in the fields; all St. Louis flocked to La Place d'Armes in front of the Government House to see the transfer.

In splendid, showy uniforms, every officer of the Spanish garrison stood at arms, intently watching the parade winding up the limestone footway from the boats below.

With its public archives and the property of a vast demesne, Don Carlos De Hault De Lassus handed over to Major Stoddard the keys of the Government House in behalf of France. A salvo of cannonry shook St. Louis.

"People of Upper Louisiana," began De Lassus in a choked and broken voice, "by order of the King, I am now about to surrender this post and its dependencies. The flag which has protected you during nearly thirty-six years will no longer be seen. The oath you took now ceases to bind. Your faithfulness and courage in upholding it will be remembered for ever. From the bottom of my heart I wish you all prosperity."

De Lassus, Stoddard, Lewis, Clark, and the soldiers filed up the yellow path, past the log church, to the fort on the hill. The Spanish flag was lowered; De Lassus wept as he took the fallen banner in his hand, but as the Lilies of France flashed in the sun the Creoles burst into tumultuous cheers. Not for forty years had they seen that flag, the emblem of their native land. Cannon roared, swords waved, and shouts were heard, but not in combat.

The gates were thrown open; out came the Spanish troops with knapsacks on their backs, ready to sail away to New Orleans. The old brass cannon and munitions of war were transported down the hill, while the American soldiers in sombre uniforms filed into the dingy old fort of Spain.

Major Stoddard sent for the French flag to be taken down at sunset.

"No, no, let it fly! Let it fly all night!" begged the Creoles, and a guard of honour went up to watch the flickering emblem of their country's brief possession.

All night long that French flag kissed the sky, all night the guard of honour watched, and the little log church of St. Louis was filled with worshippers. All the romance of Brittany and Normandy rose to memory. René Kiercereau the singer led in ballads of La Belle France, and the glories of fields where their fathers fought were rehearsed with swelling hearts. Not the real France but an ideal was in their hearts, the tradition of Louis XIV.

That was the last day of France in North America. As the beloved banner sank the drums gave a long funeral roll, but when, instead, the red, white, and blue burst on the breeze, the fifes struck into lively music and the drums rained a cataract.

"Three cheers for the American flag!" cried Charles Gratiot in the spirit of the Swiss republic, but there were no cheers. The Creoles were weeping. Sobs, lamentations arose, but the grief was mostly from old Frenchmen and their wives who so long had prayed that the Fleur de Lis might wave above San Loui'. Their sons and daughters, truly, as Lucien Bonaparte had warned Napoleon, "went to bed good Frenchmen, to awake and find themselves Americans."

The huge iron cock in the belfry of the old log church spun round and round, as if it knew not which way the wind was blowing. In three days three flags over St. Louis! No wonder the iron cock lost its head and spun and spun like any fickle weather vane.

In the same square with the Government House stood one of the Chouteau mansions. Auguste Chouteau had been there from the beginning, when as a fearless youth with Laclede he had penetrated to the site of the future San Loui' in 1764. He was a diplomat who met Indians and made alliances. He had seen the territory pass under Spain's flag, and in spite of that had made it more and more a place of Gallic refuge for his scattered countrymen. He had welcomed Saugrain, Cerré, Gratiot, in fact,—he and his brother Pierre remembered the day when there was no San Loui'.

A band of Osage chiefs had come in to see their great Spanish father. With wondering eyes they watched the cession, and were handed over to Captain Lewis to deal with in behalf of the United States. A French messenger was sent ahead with a letter to the tribe.

"The Americans taken San Loui'?"

Manuel Lisa, the Spaniard, was disgusted,—it broke up his monopoly of the Osage trade. "We will not haf the Americans!"

The Osages burnt the letter.

VI
SERGEANT ORDWAY WRITES A LETTER

The winter of 1802-3 had been uncommonly severe. Unknown to George Shannon, that winter his father hunting in the dense woods of Ohio lost his way in a snow-storm and was frozen to death. Unaware of the tragedy at home, unaware also of his own inherited facility for getting lost, the boy set out up the winding staircase of the wild Missouri.

An older brother, John, nineteen years of age, became the stay of that widowed mother with her seven small children, the least a baby, Wilson Shannon, twice the future Governor of Ohio and once the Governor of Kansas.

With a pad on his knee every soldier boy wrote home from the camp on River Dubois opposite the mouth of the Missouri. Down through the years Sergeant Ordway's letter has come to us.