Page:Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition (1905).djvu/13

 the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the winter making ready for the great work of the future.

During that winter momentous events were culminating. Louisiana, a vast region on the western bank of the Mississippi, with ill-defined boundaries and seemingly almost boundless, was finally transferred from Spain to France and from France to the United States, and the first, and an unexpected, territorial expansion of the coming giant among nations was completed. In the final act of this international drama at St. Louis, Lewis, and probably Clark and others of the expedition, took part. The Lewis and Clark exploration, while following closely the Louisiana



Purchase, was planned entirely independent of it and before we owned the territory embraced therein.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark—NOT Clarke—