Our greatest Expedition 247 
government of the United States, as also by settlement on the 
part of its citizens. 
The expedition of Lewis and Clarke, organized before and sent 
out immediately after the consummation of the Louisiana pur- 
chase, was one of the most daring, difficult, dangerous, and, at 
the same time, successful of the expeditions of which history, 
either of this or of any other country, gives record. — 
There seems to be some difference in statements of historians 
as to the number composing that expedition. According to 
Barrows, it consisted of twenty-eight persons in all—Lewis and 
Clarke, nine young Kentuckians, fourteen United States soldiers, 
two Canadian voyageurs, and one negro, the body servant of Cap- 
tain Clarke. According, however, to the probably accurate notes 
of Dr Coues to his new edition of the history of that expedition, 
it consisted of forty-five men from Missouri to the Mandan 
country, and of thirty-two, including Lewis and Clarke, there- 
after across the continent, the others returning from that point, 
as was the original program. 
Captains Lewis and Clarke were commissioned by President 
Jefferson ‘to explore the river Missouri and its principal 
branches to their sources, and then to seek to trace to its termi- 
nation in the Pacific some river, whether the Columbia, the 
Oregon, the Colorado or any other, which might offer the most 
direct, practicable water communication across the continent for 
the purposes of commerce.” 
The time occupied by these courageous men in consummat- 
ing the important and hazardous duty assigned them by their 
government was two years, four months and nine days, and 
during this time they traveled more than nine thousand miles 
through an unbroken and trackless wilderness. The start was 
made May 14, 1804, from their camp on the Mississippi, near 
the mouth of the Missouri, and returning they reached St. Louis 
September 23, 1806. They discovered the headwaters of the 
Missouri and of the Columbia, and followed the waters of the 
latter until they landed at cape Disappointment, at the mouth 
of the Columbia, in Oregon, November 15, 1805. They re- 
mained there in camp until March 23, 1806, when they com- 
menced the ascent of the Columbia in their canoes on their 
return trip. 
The hardships experienced by these brave men and by the 
courageous pioneers, men and women who in the next half cen- 
