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39 STORY OF LEWIS AND CLARK'S JOURNALS. 39 where essential he amplifies and explains them from his additional data, it being plain to see, on comparison with the originals, wherein Clark and Shannon and the Ord- way and Gass journals had assisted him to a more com- plete understanding. The nearly 1,200,000 words of the originals he condensed into 370,000 words. The first per- son plural is used, save where the captains are individually mentioned, and then we have the third person singular. So skillfully is the work done that probably few readers have realized that they had not before them the veritable journals of the explorers themselves, written upon the spot. The result will always remain one of the best di- gested and most interesting books of American travel, com- parable in many respects with Astoria arid Bonneville's Adventures of course lacking Irving's charm of style, but possessing what Irving's two Western classics do not, the ring of truth, which never fails to appeal to those who love a tale of noble adventure in the cause of civili- zation. We have seen that Jefferson, who set on foot the expe- dition, 22 had from the first expressed much concern in its records, both in the making and the publication. He had urged their early printing, and on Lewis's death spurred Clark to action, with what result has been related. The dilatoriness of that performance for which Clark, how- 22 In 1783 he suggested to Gen. George Rogers Clark, oldest brother of William, an expedition "for exploring the country from the Missisipi to California," but nothing came of it. The original MS. of this letter is in the Draper MSS., Wiscon- sin Historical Society, press mark 52 J 93 In 1786. while American minister at Paris, he proposed to John Ledyard, of Connecticut, a plan for penetrating through Russia and Siberia to Kamchatka, "and procuring a passage thence in some of the Russian vessels to Nootka Sound, whence he might make his way across the continent to America [the United States]." But Ledyard was turned back by order of Empress Catherine II., when within a few days of Kamchatka and this project failed. (See Jefferson's "Autobiography" in Ford's edition of his writings, I, pp. 94-96.) In 1793 he arranged with the French botanist Andr6 Michaux to make a transcontinental tour up the Missouri and down the Colum- bia ; but Michaux became involved in the Genet intrigue and got no farther west than Kentucky. Ten years later his fourth attempt succeeded under the direc- tion of Lewis and Clark.