structions for the conduct of his work. In the meantime (on April
30th), treaties had been signed at Paris, ceding Louisiana to the
United States. That was a distinct triumph for American statecraft. On
the one hand were ranged Napoleon, Talleyrand, and Marbois; on the
other, Jefferson, Livingston, and Monroe. The French were at a
disadvantage; their position was that of holding perishable goods,
which must be sold to avoid catastrophe. Napoleon said, not without
reason, that the government of the United States availed itself of his
distress incident to the impending struggle with England. However that
may be, the territory changed owners for a consideration of
$15,000,000.

Formal notification of the transfer was not received in Washington
until the early part of July, when active preparations for the
exploration were being made. Its receipt did not alter the character of
the expedition, though many of the international complications were
dissipated. Thereafter the work was purely domestic in most of its
aspects.

CHAPTER III

TERMS OF THE COMMISSION

Mr. Jefferson's instructions to the young officer showed his own
farsighted earnestness. Had he who received them been any less in
earnest, the task assigned to him must have seemed appalling. The
primary instruction was to blaze a path, more than four thousand miles
long, through an unstudied wilderness. It was conceived that this could
best be done by following the Missouri to its head waters, crossing
"the Highlands" to the navigable waters of the Columbia, and going down
that river to the Pacific; but this was only conjectural. The map in
the hands of the explorers, the only basis for a preliminary outline of
their route, was drawn partly from hearsay, partly from imagination; it
showed the source of the Missouri to be somewhere in Central
California; it showed nothing of the mighty barrier of the Rocky
Mountains. There was one thin, uncertain line of hills, far to the
west, that might have been the Sierra Nevadas; further than that there
was nothing but a broad interior plain, seamed with rivers. Practically
nothing was known of the difficulties that would be encountered. White
men had ventured for a little way up the Missouri in earlier years, to
carry on a desultory fur-trade with the Indians; but these traders had
been mostly happy-go-lucky Frenchmen, who had taken but little thought
for the morrow. They had no trustworthy information to give that wou