rank of adjutant,
but was compelled to resign, from the service in 1796, on account of
ill-health. He settled at the half-Spanish town of St. Louis, and in
March, 1804, was appointed by President Jefferson a second lieutenant of
artillery, with orders to join Captain Lewis in his journey to the
Pacific. Clark was really the military director of the expedition, and
his knowledge of Indian life and character had much to do with its
success.

The party consisted of twenty-eight men, and in the spring of 1804,
started up the Missouri, following it until late in October, when they
camped for the winter near the present site of Bismarck, North. Dakota.
They resumed the journey early in the spring, and in May, caught their
first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Reaching the headwaters of the
Columbia, at last, they floated down its current, and on the morning of
November 7, 1806, after a journey of a year and a half, full of every
sort of hardship and adventure, they saw ahead of them the blue expanse
of the Pacific. They spent the winter on the coast, and reached St.
Louis again in September, 1807, having traversed over nine thousand
miles of unbroken wilderness where no white man had ever before set
foot. It was largely because of this expedition that our government was
able, forty years later, to claim and maintain a title to the state of
Oregon.

Congress rewarded the members of the expedition with grants of land,
and Lewis was appointed governor of Missouri. But the strain of the
expedition to the Pacific had undermined his health; he became subject
to fits of depression, and on October 8, 1809, he put an end to his life
in a lonely cabin near Nashville, Tennessee, where he had stopped for a
night's lodging. Clark lived thirty years longer, serving as Indian
agent, governor of Missouri, and superintendent of Indian affairs.

While Lewis and Clark were struggling across the continent, another
young adventurer was conducting some explorations farther to the east.
Zebulon Pike, aged twenty-seven, a captain in the regular army, was, in
1805, appointed to lead an expedition to the source of the Mississippi.
He accomplished this, after a hard journey lasting nine months; and, a
year later, leading another expedition to the southwest, discovered a
great mountain which he named Pike's Peak, and, continuing southward,
came out on the Rio Grande. He was in Spanish territory, and was held
prisoner for a time, but was finally rele