Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE LEWIS AND CLARKE EXPEDITION. Thomas Jefferson’s Efforts to Open a Route to the Pacific?Ledyard’s Attempt Baffled?Captain Lewis’ First Project?Congress Provides for an Exploration?Character of Lewis?Captain William Clarke?The Expedition Organized?Its Route, Adventures, and Arrival at the Mouth of the Columbia?The Return Journey?Great Interest in the Results of the Expedition. To Thomas Jefferson belongs the honor of planning and setting on foot the enterprise of exploring the interior continental region on the line now followed by the Northern Pacific Railroad. When in Paris as American Envoy he made the acquaintance of John Lcdyard, who had accompanied Captain Cook on one of his voyages. Jefferson proposed to Lcdyard that he should cross Russia to Kamtchatka, take passage in a Russian trading vessel to Nootka Sound,
fall down into the latitude of the Missouri River, and penetrate to and through that to the United States. Lcdyard eagerly seized the idea, and by Jefferson’s assistance he obtained the protection of the Empress Catharine, and started on his journey. When two hundred miles from Kamtchatka he was arrested by an officer of the Empress, who had changed her mind after his departure, put into a close carriage, and taken as a prisoner to Poland. When released, with health broken by the hardships he had been subjected to, he was glad to relinquish his project and leave the Russian territories. Subsequently he went to Africa and died at Cairo. Jefferson held fast to his idea of opening the interior of the continent bv the route of the Missouri and the Co- lumbia rivers. In 1792 he proposed to the American Philosophical Society a subscription to engage some competent person to explore the region in an opposite direction from that which Lcdyard…