e dry by to-morrow
morning, for this fantail rides high above the motors.

"Finish drying and packing the dishes now, and let's be off when Rob
gets done. We're exactly one hundred and eighteen years to a day and an
hour after the boats of Lewis and Clark at this very place--only, Lewis
went across by land to St. Charles, and saved a little of his time by
meeting the boats there."

"And that was the real start, wasn't it, Uncle Dick?" demanded Frank.

"In a way, yes. But over yonder, across the Mississippi, on the river Du
Bois, in the American Bottoms, Will Clark had built the cabins for the
men's winter quarters. And long before that, Meriwether Lewis had left
Washington after saying good-by to Mr. Jefferson. And then he stopped
awhile near where Pittsburgh is, to get his boats ready to go down the
Ohio, and get men. And then he picked up Clark where Louisville now
is. And then he left the Ohio River and crossed by horseback to
the Army post across from here, to get still more men for the
expedition--soldiers, you see, good hardy men they were, who knew the
backwoods life and feared nothing. So after they got all of the
expedition together, they made winter quarters over yonder, and in the
spring they came over here, and the great fleet of three boats and
forty-five men started off on their adventure.

"Of course, Rob, you know the incident of the Three Flags?"

Rob nodded.

"That was a great day, when the American army of the West, twenty-nine
men in buckskin, under this young captain of thirty years, marched into
St. Louis to take possession of the Great West for America. And St.
Louis in twenty-four hours was under the flags of three great countries,
Spain, France, and the United States.

"You see--and I want you to study these things hard some day--Napoleon,
the Emperor of France, was at war. This Western region belonged to
Spain, or she said it did, but she ceded it to Napoleon; and then when
he didn't think he could hold it against Great Britain, he sold it to
us.

"Now this had all been country largely settled by French people who had
come down long ago from the Great Lakes. They didn't think Spain had
exercised real sovereignty. Now we had bought up both claims, the
Spanish and the French; so we owned St. Louis all right, going or
coming.

"So, first the Spanish flag over the old fort was struck. Next came the
French. And the French loved the place so much, they begged they might
have their flag fl