Page:The Conquest.djvu/408

 Farrar was a notable figure in old St. Louis, riding night and day as far out as Boone's Lick, establishing a reputation that remains proverbial yet. He had married Anne Thruston, the daughter of Fanny.

"Let her try a trip on the new steamboat," said the Doctor.

So after her picture was painted by Chester Harding in that Spring of 1819, Clark and Julia and the little boys, Meriwether Lewis, William Preston, and George Rogers Hancock, set out for New Orleans in the "new-fangled steamboat."

It was a long and dangerous trip; the river was encumbered with snags; every night they tied up to a tree.

"Travel by night? Couldn't think of it! We'd be aground before morning!" said the Captain.

Around by sea the Governor and his wife sailed by ship to Washington.

"I will join you at the Sweet Springs," said President Monroe to the Governor and his wife in Washington.

"The Sweet Springs cure all my ills," said Dolly Madison at Montpelier.

"She will recover at the Sweet Springs," said Jefferson at Monticello.

But at the Sweet Springs Julia grew so ill they had to carry her on a bed to Fotheringay.

"Miss Judy done come home sick!" The servants wept.

Something of a physician himself, Clark began the use of fumes of tar through a tube, and to the surprise of all "Miss Judy" rallied again.

"As soon as I can leave her in safety I shall return to St. Louis," wrote the Governor to friends at the Missouri capital.

"If I should die," said Julia sweetly one day, "and you ever think of marrying again, consider my cousin Harriet."

"Ah, but you will be well, my darling, when Spring comes."

And she was better in the Spring, thinking of the new house at St. Louis. Julia was a very neat and