ything
about this vast domain beyond the Mississippi. The President himself was
not much better informed about Louisiana. In a report to Congress he
undertook to put together such information as he could cull from books
of travel and pick up by hearsay. His credulity led him into some
amazing statements. A thousand miles up the Missouri, he stated soberly,
there was a salt mountain, one hundred and eighty miles long and
forty-five miles in width, composed of solid rock salt, without any
trees or even shrubs on it. He would not have believed the tale but for
the testimony of travelers who had shown specimens of the salt to the
people of St. Louis. Federalist newspapers made merry over the
President's discovery. "Can this be Lot's wife?" asked one editor.

But Jefferson had already taken steps to dispel general ignorance about
the Far West. Securing from Congress an appropriation for an expedition
among the Missouri Indians, ostensibly to extend the external commerce
of the United States, he commissioned his private secretary, Meriwether
Lewis, and William Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, to undertake
one of the most important explorations in American annals. With a body
of picked men, Lewis and Clark made their way to the upper waters of the
Missouri, and passed the winter of 1804-05 among the Mandans. In the
following spring and summer they crossed the Rocky Mountains to the
waters of the Columbia. Here they spent a second winter, and then began
their arduous return, by way of the Great Divide, the Yellowstone River,
and the Missouri, to St. Louis. The journals of the members of this
expedition are a remarkable record of personal adventures and scientific
observations. It was not until 1814, however, that the details of this
expedition were given to the public.

Meantime, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike had won immediate fame by
publishing an account of two thrilling expeditions into the Far West. On
the first expedition Pike traced the upper course of the Mississippi
almost to its source; on the second, begun soon after his return to St.
Louis in 1806, he followed the course of the Arkansas to the peak which
bears his name. His attempt to explore the headwaters of the Rio Grande,
which he mistook for the Red River, led to his capture by the Spanish
authorities. After a roundabout journey through Mexico and Texas, he was
released on the Louisiana frontier.

Unexpected as the acquisition of Louisiana was to th