Page:The Conquest.djvu/128

 Bluff.

As Washington went forty years before to inquire of the French, "Why are you building forts on the Ohio?" so now William Clark, on board the galiot, "La Vigilante," dropped down to New Madrid and asked the Spaniard, "Why are you building forts on the Mississippi?"

Down came Charles De Hault De Lassus, the Commandant himself. "I assure you we have been very far from attempting to usurp the territory of a nation with whom we desire to remain in friendship," protested the courtly Commandant with a wave of his sword and a flutter of his plume. "But the threats of the French republicans living in the United States,"—he paused for a reply.

"Calm yourself," replied Lieutenant Clark. "Read here the pacific intentions of my country."

None better than William Clark understood the virtues of conciliation and persuasion. "I assure you that the United States is disposed to preserve peace with all the powers of Europe, and with Spain especially."

With mutual expressions of esteem and cordial parting salvos, Lieutenant Clark left his Spanish friends with a mollified feeling toward "those turbulent Americans."

Nevertheless George Rogers Clark had opened the river, to be closed again at peril.

Among the soldiers at Wayne's camp that winter was Lieutenant Meriwether Lewis, "just from the Whiskey Rebellion," he said. Between him and William Clark, now Captain Clark, there sprang up the most intimate friendship.

"The nature of the Insurrection?" remarked Lewis in his camp talks with Clark. "Why, the Pennsylvania mountaineers about Redstone-Old-Fort refused to pay the whiskey tax, stripped, tarred, and feathered the collectors! 'The people must be taught obedience,' said General Washington, and, after all peaceable means failed, he marched fifteen thousand militia into the district. The thought that Washington was coming at the head of troops made them reconsider. They sent deputations to make terms about the time of Wayne's batt