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IX

THE ROMANCE OF THE MANDANS

"What will they find?" asked the people of the United States, discussing the journey of Lewis and Clark.

"Numerous powerful and warlike nations of savages, of gigantic stature, fierce, treacherous, and cruel, and particularly hostile to white men."

"The mammoth of prehistoric time feeding from the loftiest forests, shaking the earth with its tread of thunder."

"They will find a mountain of solid salt glistening in the sun with streams of brine issuing from its caverns."

"They will find blue-eyed Indians, white-haired, fairer than other tribes, planting gardens, making pottery, and dwelling in houses."

"Oh, yes," said the Federalists, "Jefferson has invented these stories to aggrandise the merit of his purchase. They never can cross the mountains. Human enterprise and exertion will attempt them in vain."

"It was folly! folly to send those men to perish miserably in the wilderness! It was a bold and wicked scheme of Jefferson. They will never return alive to this country."

Had not Jefferson himself in his anxiety directed Lewis and Clark to have recourse to our consuls in Java, the Isles of France and Bourbon, and the Cape of Good Hope? Heaven alone knew whither the Missouri—Columbia might lead them!

But the white Indians—

In the history of Wales there is a story that on account of wars in Wales a Welsh Prince in 1170 "prepared certain shipps, with men and munition, and sought adventures by seas, sailing west, and leaving the coast of Ireland so farre north, that he came to land