Page:The Conquest.djvu/325

 United States had virtually taken possession of the continent. Members of Congress looked at one another with dilated eyes. With lifted brow and prophetic vision the young republic pierced the future. The Mississippi, once her utmost border, was now but an inland river. Beyond it, the Great West hove in sight, with peaks of snow and the blue South Sea. The problem of the ages had been solved; Lewis and Clark had found the road to Asia.

The news fell upon Europe and America as not less than a revelation.

Congress immediately gave sixteen hundred acres of land each to the Captains, and double pay in gold and three hundred and twenty acres to each of their men, to be laid out on the west side of the Mississippi. On the third day of March, 1807, Captain Lewis was appointed Governor of Louisiana; and on March 12, Captain Clark was made Brigadier General, and Indian Agent for Louisiana.

Tall, slender, but twenty-nine, Henry Clay was in the Senate, advocating roads,—roads and canals to the West. He was planning, pleading, persuading for a canal around the Falls of the Ohio, he was appealing for the improvement of the Wilderness Road through which Boone had broken a bridle trace. His prolific imagination grasped the Chesapeake and Ohio canal and an interior connection with the Lakes.

Henry Clay—"Harry Clay" as Kentucky fondly called him—had a faculty for remembering names, faces, places. As yesterday, he recalled William Clark at Lexington.

And Clark remembered Clay, standing in an ox-waggon, with flashing eyes, hair wildly waving, and features aglow, addressing an entranced throng. The same look flashed over him now as he stepped toward the heroes of the Pacific.

"Congratulations, Governor."

"Congratulations, General."

The young men smiled at their new titles.

Another was there, not to be forgotten, strong featured, cordial, cheerful, of manly beauty and