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Show The Lewis and Clark Exped'SIon. H The American people as yet do not half com- H prehend the magnificent journey made by Lewis H and Clark from St LouIb to tho mouth of the ,H Columbia and back. Zenephon's retreat with his H ten thousand has rung the world for moro 9 than twenty centuries, but it does not compare H with the journey of Lewis and Clark, A little band of men, with one Indian woman, without iH guides, and totally unacquainted with the topog- 9 raphy of tho country before them, which had no fl inhabitants exoept savages, started out to explore fl and cross a continent. It was known that one fl great trailless mountain range at least was to be H crossed, and that the journey before them in an H air line covered more than 2,000 miles or quite GOO miles more than the trail that Zenophon jl blazed in western Asia. Zenephon's band was I made up of 10,000 picked Grecian soldiers; that of Lewis and Clark of thirty men all told and ono , Indian woman. This woman, Sacajawea, proved to I be tho salvation of tho company; without her I they would probably all have been lost in the I mountains and starved. In the future, when frontier life will have become but a memory in I this Republic, some inspired writer will find in jfl the part that Sacajawea took in that expedition a H themo for a story or a poem moro thrilling than I that of Zonobla. She was a Shoshone squaw, but I six years before the expedition she had been 9 stolen and Lewis and Clark found her the wife I of a half cook and half guide on the Missouri B somewhere above where Omaha now is. She be- I came a guide to tho party when her old home was I reached and a mediator between the party and tlrr wild tribes that jjiaplifl whmt is now Mon- I tana. I The party was often on the verge of starva- I tlon; they wore often reduced to dog and horse I meat for food; th6y camped on and descended I trailless mountains, forded rivers, stood off sav- g ages; when they reached tho valley of the Columbia Co-lumbia west of the Cascades they wore caught in a three days' awful storm; they passed the win- a ter near where Astoria now is, and the next year fe made their way back. H No other so splendid a feat of exploring has 9 ever been performed on our continent; no more P devotion to a high duty has ever been displayed. I And' the wonder Is the men who performed the I tremendous work did it as a matter of course as 91 I something not to bo counted as out of the ordinary ordi-nary just the fulfilling of a trust that had been reposed In them, and there was nothing to do but to carry it out. Their visit was a flfr dedication of the country to Liberty; they were the first low wash of a human wave thai was, after half a century, to swell to the roll of a human sea. They antedated ante-dated the ox team and the prairie schooner, the steamboat and the rushing trains. Columbus found the New World, but ho had nothing to deal with but winds and wavos and a mutinous crow. He could sleep at night secure In the thought that with tho dawn, at the worst, he would only be greeted by sea and sky and confidently in answer to the fears of his superstitious crew ho could calmly answer, "Sail on, sail on!" There were no savage tribes to meet, no mountains to climb. But tills little band had no answer from the stars, no sure knowledge at nigh' of what the dawn would bring; but it was not necessary. They had enlisted for the work; the sappers and minors which civilization had sent out to storm tho fortresses fort-resses of a continent And they did thew ork not oven comprehending its andeur or its wirth to native land. They were heroes all. |