Page:The Conquest.djvu/184

 n attacks, Corporal Warfington and six soldiers had been engaged at St. Louis and nine French boys of Cahokia, inured to the paddle and the camp. Feather-decked and beaded they came, singing the songs of old Cahokia to start the little squadron.

The Americans had knives in their belts, pistols in their holsters, knapsacks on their backs, powder horns and pouches of ammunition, ink horns and quills, ready to face the wilderness and report. Lewis encouraged every one to keep a journal.

"I niver wint to school but nineteen days in me boyhood and that was whin I was a man," said Patrick Gass. But what Pat lacked in books he made up in observation and shrewd reasoning; hence it fell out that Patrick Gass's journal was the first published account of the Lewis and Clark expedition. All honour to Patrick Gass. Of such are our heroes.

The cession was on Wednesday, May 9, 1804, and all the men were there but a few who guarded camp. At three o'clock the following Monday, May 14, Captain Clark announced, "All aboard!" The heavy-laden bateau and two pirogues swung out, to the voyageurs' chanson, thrilling like a brass band as their bright new paddles cut the water:

And hill and hollow echoed,

"San Chawle!" cried Cruzatte the bowsman at two o'clock, Wednesday, when the first Creole village hove in sight. At a gun, the signal of traders, all St. Charles rushed to see the first Americans that had ever come up the Missouri. And straggling behind the Frenchmen came their friends, the Kickapoos of Kaskaskia, now on a hunt in the Missouri.