Page:The Conquest.djvu/147

 to his mother, the head done in fired chalk and crayon, with that curious pink background so peculiar to the St. Memin pictures.

XXX

THE PRESIDENT TALKS WITH MERIWETHER

Hours by themselves Jefferson sat talking to Lewis. With face sunny, lit with enthusiasm, he spoke rapidly, even brilliantly, a dreamer, a seer, a prophet, believing in the future of America.

"I have never given it up, Meriwether. Before the peace treaty was signed, after the Revolution, I was scheming for a western exploration. We discussed it at Annapolis; I even went so far as to write to George Rogers Clark on the subject. Then Congress sent me to France.

"In France a frequent guest at my table was John Ledyard, of Connecticut. He had accompanied Captain Cook on his voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and now panted for some new enterprise. He had endeavoured to engage the merchants of Boston in the Northwest fur trade, but the times were too unsettled. 'Why, Mr. Jefferson,' he was wont to say, 'that northwest land belongs to us. I felt I breathed the air of home the day we touched at Nootka Sound. The very Indians are just like ours. And furs,—that coast is rich in beaver, bear, and otter. Depend upon it,' he used to say, 'untold fortunes lie untouched at the back of the United States.'"

"I then proposed to him to go by land to Kamtchatka, cross in some Russian vessel to Nootka Sound, fall down into the latitude of the Missouri, and penetrate to and through that to the United States. Ledyard eagerly seized the idea. I obtained him a permit from the Empress Catherine, and he set out; went to St. Petersburg, crossed the Russian possessions to within two hundred miles of Kamtchatka. Here he was arrested by order of the Empress, who by this time had changed her mind, and f