The Greatest Works of Emerson Hough – 19 Books in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Emerson Hough
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about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and what became of their Journals after they got home? You’d hardly believe it.”
“Tell us,” said Rob.
Uncle Dick opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail of the Adventurer.
“They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some education, and his mind was very keen. He was the private secretary of President Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not ‘regularly educated.’ He studied some months in astronomy and other scientific lines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the special purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicott had experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in the woods, the record says.
“Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years the older — thirty-three — while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells better than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever you see anything of the Journal spelled correctly, it is false and spurious — that’s not the original, for spelling was the one thing those two fellows couldn’t do.
“They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had an elk-skin cover to his book — and that little book disappeared for over one hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distant relatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten years ago.
“At night, by the camp fire, the two officers would write out their field notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson. Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy the other’s notes. Only the originals could make all that plain. And, alas! not all the original work is known to exist.
“No one seems to have valued the written record of that wonderful trip. When the young men got to St. Louis on their return, they did try to make a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and they couldn’t get a publisher — think of that! But at last they did get an editor, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, he was, of Philadelphia.
“That poor man waded through over one million words of copy in the ‘notes’ he got hold of at last! But by then President Jefferson was getting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clark was busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was a writer. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered.
“Biddle saved the most of it, boiling it down quite a lot. Then he gave it over to Paul Allen, a newspaper man, also of Philadelphia, who did more things to it, getting it ready for the press. This book did not get published until February, 1814, five years after Lewis died and eight years after they got back. By that time a lot of people had had a hack at it. A lot more have had a hack since then; but Biddle is the man who really saved the day, and Allen helped him very much.
“Of late, inside of the last twenty or thirty years, many editions of that great Journal have been issued. The best is the one that holds closest to Clark’s spelling. That’s the best. And I’ll tell you it took genius, sometimes, to tell what he meant, for that redhead spelled by ear.
“Look here — and here. ‘Catholic’ he spells ‘Carthlick’; ‘Loups’ — the Indians — he calls ‘Loos.’ He spells ‘gnat’ ‘knat,’ or spells ‘mosquito’ ‘musquitr,’ and calls the ‘tow rope’ the ‘toe rope’ — as indeed Lewis did also. He spells ‘squaw’ as ‘squar’ always; and ‘Sioux’ he wrote down as ‘Cuouex’ — which makes one guess a bit — and the ‘Osages’ are ‘Osarges,’ the Iowas, ‘Ayauways.’ His men got ‘deesantary’ and ‘tumers,’ which were ‘dificcelt to cure.’ He gives a dog ‘som meet,’ and speaks of a storm which ‘seased Instancetaniously.’ He does a lot of odd things with big words and little ones, as spelling ‘cedar’ ‘seeder’ — at least the simplest way! As to jerked meat, I suppose it was as good if spelled ‘jurked,’ or even ‘jirked,’ and a ‘tirkey’ is as good as turkey, perhaps.
“Plain and matter-of-fact, he was, that Redhead Chief, as the Indians called him; yet very little escaped him or his friend, and both could note the beauty of nature. See here, where Clark writes on June 20th (his capitals are odd as his spelling): ‘at Sunset the atmesphier presented every appearance of wind, Blue and White Streeks centiring at the Sun as she disappeared and the Clouds Situated to the S. W. Guilded in the most butiful manner.’
“Can’t you see the sunset? And can’t you see Will Clark, his tongue on one side, frowning as he wrote by the firelight?
“And Lewis wasn’t so much better. For instance, he spelled squirrel as ‘squirril,’ where Clark spells it ‘squarl,’ and he spells hawk ‘halk,’ and hangs a ‘Meadle’ on a chief’s neck. Oh, this old Journal certainly is a curious thing!”
Jesse threw himself down on the sand in a fit of laughter. “I could do better’n that my own self,” said he, at last. “Why, what sort of people were they, couldn’t spell any better than that?”
“Maybe you could,” said Uncle Dick, “but you are not to laugh at William Clark, who was a great man. He did all that writing after a hard day’s work, in a wild and strange country. I suppose it was hard for him to write, but he did it, and here it is.
“Oddly enough, Clark wrote a very fine, clear hand — a gentleman’s handwriting. The Journals are always done in pen and ink. Clark did most of the work in the Journal, but Lewis at times took a hand. Between them they kept what might be called the log of the voyage.
“They worked, all of that party. The oarsmen had to work under a taskmaster all day. Some one had to hunt, for they only had about a ton of cargo, all told, and they only had $2,500 to spend for the whole trip out and back, and to feed forty people two years. And at night the commanders made Gass and Ordway and Floyd and Whitehouse keep journals, too; and Pryor and Frazier did a bit of the same, like enough. They had to cover everything they saw.
“So that is how we got this wonderful Journal, boys — one of the simplest and most manly books ever written. As I said, it was long forgotten and came near being ruined.
“The book of Patrick Gass got out first, and it had many publishers on both sides the ocean — though, of course, it had to be rewritten a great deal. Up to 1851 there had been fifteen real and fake Lewis and Clark books printed, in English, French, and German; and there are about a dozen books with Sergeant Patrick Gass as the ‘author.’
“They had no cameras in those days, but those men brought out exact word pictures of that land and its creature inhabitants. The spelling we must forget — that day was different and schools were rare. But good minds and bodies they surely had. They were not traders or trappers — they were explorers and adventurers in every sense of the word, and gentlemen as well.
“But now,” concluded Uncle Dick, “that’ll do for the story of the Journal. We’ve got it with us, and will use it right along. We’re all ready, now? Well, let’s be off, for now I see the wind is with us, and it’s even more than William Clark started with when his three boats left the Wood River and started up the Missouri. He said they had a ‘jentle brease.’
“Off we go — on the greatest waterway in all the world, and on the trail of the greatest explorers the world has ever known.”
“Now then,” commanded Rob, laying hold of the rail. “Heave — o!” The others also pushed. The good ship Adventurer swung free of the sand and lay afloat. They sprang in. Uncle Dick steadied her with the oars. Jesse and John went ahead to trim ship. Rob gave a couple of turns to the flywheels of the two outboard motors and adjusted his feet to the special steering gear. The doubled motors began their busy sput-sput-sput! Like a thing of life the long craft, Adventurer, of America, turned into the current of the great Missouri, the echoes of the energetic little engines echoing far and wide.
CHAPTER V
OFF UP THE RIVER