First Across the Continent - The story of the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804-5-6 by Noah Brooks
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page 7 of 341 (02%)
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seen by ourselves--with all these qualifications, as if selected and
implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him." Before we have finished the story of Meriwether Lewis and his companions, we shall see that this high praise of the youthful commander was well deserved. For a coadjutor and comrade Captain Lewis chose William Clark,(1) also a native of Virginia, and then about thirty-three years old. Clark, like Lewis, held a commission in the military service of the United States, and his appointment as one of the leaders of the expedition with which his name and that of Lewis will ever be associated, made the two men equal in rank. Exactly how there could be two captains commanding the same expedition, both of the same military and actual rank, without jar or quarrel, we cannot understand; but it is certain that the two young men got on together harmoniously, and no hint or suspicion of any serious disagreement between the two captains during their long and arduous service has come down to us from those distant days. (1) It is a little singular that Captain Clark's name has been so persistently misspelled by historians and biographers. Even in most of the published versions of the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the name of one of the captains is spelled Clarke. Clark's own signature, of which many are in existence, is without the final and superfluous vowel; and the family name, for generations past, does not show it. |
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