militia companies sent their officers to a convention at Detroit, and the convention, as representing the people, addressed the President, and begged the Governor and one of the judges to go to Washington in their behalf. But nothing was done for them. When this was known in Michigan another convention was held and another address drawn and sent, this time to Congress. Then their complaints were heard, and in the bundle of acts Jefferson signed on the last day of the second session* of the ninth Congress was one for the settlement of land claims in Michigan. Another gave sixteen hundred acres each to the explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clarke, and double pay and three hundred and twenty acres to every man who marched with them to the Pacific.t

In 1792, the very year in which Captain Grey discovered the mouth of the Columbia river, Jefferson urged the American Philosophical Society to send a couple of explorers into the country where is now its source. The sum required was not great, yet nine years went by before enough was raised to make the expedition possible. A young officer named Meriwether Lewis was then selected, and with him was joined a Frenchman named André Michaux. Michaux was a botanist of repute and had, in the autumn of 1801, come over from France to study the plants and trees of the United States. But the two got no further than Kentucky when a letter from the French Minister bade Michaux give up the expedition and study botany elsewhere. He obeyed, for he had in a measure been sent out by Chaptal, the French Minister of the Interior. The disappointment of Lewis was great; but he was soon consoled with the place of Private Secretary to the President.

While he held this post a fine chance opened for securing the long-wished-for expedition. The act establishing trading posts among the Indian tribes was soon to expire. Jefferson was desirous that the new law should extend the system to the Indians on the Missouri, and made this a pretext for urging the exploration of the river from its mouth to its source. The money was granted. Meriwether Lewis was again put in command, and chose for his second William

* March 3, 1807.

March 3, 1807.

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Clarke. Jefferson drew their instructions, and, after many weeks spent in careful preparation and many more lost in unavoidable delay, the party reached Cahokia in December, 1803. To go at that time of year was impossible. The winter was therefore passed in camp on the Illinois side of the Mississippi river, just opposite the mouth of the Missouri. Their instructions bade them go up the Missouri to its source, find out if possible the fountains of the Mississippi, and the true position of the Lake of the Woods; cross the Stony Mountains, and, having found the nearest river flowing into the Pacific, go down it to the sea. All along the way the great features of nature, mouths of rivers, falls, rapids, islands, portages were to be carefully located by astronomical means. A study was to be made of Indian life. What tribes were met with, what language they spoke, what food they ate, what laws and customs prevailed among them, what they did, and what they believed, were all to be fully noted down. The animals encountered, the minerals found, the botany and the physical geography of the country were likewise to be described. Nor were they to fail to notice what kind of portage lay between the waters flowing into the Gulf and the waters flowing into the Pacific, and whether as good furs could not be had about the sources of the Missouri as were bought from the Indians on the Columbia.

Early in May, 1804, the explorers broke camp and set off in three boats loaded with trinkets for the Indians. By November they reached the Mandan villages, not far from the present city of Bismarck. There the winter was passed. Resuming the journey in the spring of 1805, they pushed up the Missouri, crossed North Dakota, crossed Montana, and near the present town of Gallatin came to three branches. These they named Gallatin, Madison, and Jefferson, names still given them on the maps. Taking the Jefferson branch, they followed it to its source in the Bitter Root Mountains and slaked their thirst at what seemed to be the source of the Missouri river. Crossing the divide, they came some hours later to another spring, and drank for the first time of the waters of the Pacific slope. They were at the head-waters of what they called Lewis, but what is now known as the Salmon river. Un

able to push their way down this, they turned backward and wandered through the mountains to Bitter Root river. Down the valley of this stream they went to a spot not far from its junction with the Flathead; named the place Traveller's Rest, and, turning westward, went over a mountain pass to Clear Water river. The Clear Water bore them to the Snake, the Snake to the Columbia, and the Columbia to a spot where, late in November, they "saw the waves like small mountains rolling out in the sea." Winter was spent on the Pacific coast. With spring the explorers retraced their steps to Traveller's Rest, where the party was divided. Lewis with one band went off to the sources of the Maria river; Clarke with another band went down the Yellowstone. In September, 1806, both parties were once more at St. Louis.

While Lewis and Clarke were thus seeking for the sources of the Missouri and the Columbia in the mountains of Montana, Zebulon Pike was exploring the sources of the Mississippi in Minnesota. Leaving St. Louis in August, 1805, he made his way slowly up the Mississippi, lived all winter among the Indians and the agents of the Northwest Fur Company, explored the cluster of lakes that feed the great river, and decided the main source to be Lake Le Sang Sue. In April, 1806, Pike was back at St. Louis. There a new and yet more arduous duty was given him. He was to escort a delegation of Indian chiefs to their villages on the Osage river. He was to visit the tribes that dwelt along the Arkansas and the Red, and, if possible, persuade the Comanches to come to a conference at St. Louis. On July fifteenth he started. His route was by boat up the Missouri to the Osage, and up the Osage to the village of the Indians he was escorting. There he took horse, went southward to the source of the Osage, and then northwestward across the present Indian Territory, crossed the Verdigris river and the Kansas river, traversed the State of Kansas, and reached a point on the Republican river in Nebraska. Then he turned southward and struck the Arkansas river not far from the ninety-ninth meridian. Pushing up the Arkansas to a point near Denver, he measured the height of the peak that now bears his name, crossed the mountains, crossed the Platte, came to the

1805.

EXPLORATION OF PIKE.

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Big Horn, explored the sources of the Arkansas, and began a vain search for the Red. Determined to find it, he built a block-house on the banks of the Arkansas, filled it with provisions and cumbersome baggage, and went on westward and southward. The march was a terrible one. It was the depth of winter. The cold was intense. The snow was waistdeep. The men, half clad, depended for food on the buffaloes; but the buffaloes had left the plains and taken refuge in the mountains. To the sufferings caused by cold were thus added the sufferings caused by hunger. Often they were forty-eight hours without food. Once Captain Pike was on the point of perishing from starvation. Two of his men had their feet so frozen that the bones came through the flesh. Even then he would not give way. Leaving them in a rude camp, he pushed on southward till late in January, 1807, he saw through a gap in the mountains the waters of the Rio Grande. Supposing it to be the Red, he hurried to its banks, selected a spot on one of its feeders, put up a strong fort, and sent back for his disabled companions and his baggage. Before they came, the Spaniards were upon him in force. Finding himself on Spanish soil, he submitted and was taken to Santa Fé. There the Governor of New Mexico examined him and sent him to the commandant at Chihuahua. Dismissed by him, Pike and his company took the longest and safest route home, went south far into Mexico, and, turning northward, crossed the Rio Grande, traversed Texas, and July first reached the American fort at Natchitoches on the Red river.

11

CHAPTER XVII.

THE SPREAD OF DEMOCRACY.

THE admission of Ohio into the Union as a State was attended with no general demonstrations, and aroused very little interest beyond her own bounds. Yet every Republican observer of days and seasons, every Republican who, on the fourth of each March and the fourth of each July, heard speeches and drank toasts in honor of the triumph of Jeffersonian principles and the rights of man, might well have marked the admission of Ohio. The adoption of her Constitution was a political event. It was another triumph for the rights of man; another victory in that great struggle on the results of which are staked the dearest interests of the human race. No person could, in 1803, look over our country without beholding on every hand the lingering remains of monarchy, of aristocracy, of class rule. But he must indeed have been a careless observer if he failed to notice the boldness with which those remains were attacked, and the rapidity with which they were being swept away. In the seaboard States-in the States which, with the advice of the Continental Congress of 1776, took up civil government and formed constitutions in the early days of the Revolutionary War-very little of what would now be called democracy existed. Everywhere the political rights of man were fenced about with restrictions which would now be thought unbearable. The right to vote, the right to hold office, were dependent not on manhood qualifications, but on religious opinions, on acres of land, on pounds, shillings, and pence. Voters must own land or property, rent a house, or pay taxes of some sort. Here the qualification was fifty acres of land or personal property to the value of thirty pounds.

*

* Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina.