Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/98

72 that a great thing had been accomplished towards the development of the nation. His enthusiasm and hopefulness spread to Congress and to the leaders of opinion throughout the land. A like enthusiasm soon possessed the mass of population, and emigration westward began. Already the older West was teeming with that race of pioneers which has made up the life and the grandeur of the nineteenth century. The American hive began to swarm. "Out West" began to mean something more than Ohio and Kentucky. The distant sources of the Missouri and the heights of the Shining Mountains, with all the fantastic tales that had been told of them, were drawing our grandfathers farther and farther from the old colonial America of the eastern coast, and were beginning to modify the whole course of American history. The atmosphere of boundless expectation gathered over farm and town in the older States and the proposed expedition of Lewis and Clark fascinated the people as much as the voyage of Columbus fascinated the Spain of his day.

And what manner of men were in charge of this expedition, thus filled with both interest and peril? Meriwether Lewis was the leader of the party. He was a captain in the U. S. Army who was well known to Jefferson and who had been selected by him as possessed of the endurance, boldness, and energy which made him the fittest man within Jefferson's knowledge for the duties of commander. His whole life, from his boyhood days in Virginia, had been one of bold adventure. It is related that at the tender age of eight, he was already illustrious for successful midnight forays upon the coon and possum. He had