Page:Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition (1905).djvu/14

 were Virginians, young, strong and healthful, brave and resourceful, intelligent, and warm and devoted friends. Each, in qualities that counted for much in such an enterprise, was the complement of the other. Lewis and Clark

had both been army officers, but were civilians in 1803, Lewis being the private secretary of President Jefferson, the father of the exploration, before taking charge of the expedition. Both men were commissioned anew as army officers, however, and all the men of the expedition were enlisted as soldiers for the purpose of thorough organization and discipline. Many of the men were carefully drafted from among the soldiers at the various army posts along the Ohio river and in the West, and others were selected by the leaders from among the hardy frontiersmen of their acquaintance, for special and valuable abilities as water-men, scouts, hunters, guides, etc.

It has taken a hundred years for the United States to come to something like a real conception of what Lewis and Clark, the leaders in the exploration of the West, did for their country.

A brief statement of the route of the expedition led by these young men establishes, prima facie, its great