ngress by a confidential message of January 18th, and an extension of
its views to the Indians on the Missouri. In order to prepare the way,
the message proposed the sending an exploring party to trace the
Missouri to its source, to cross the Highlands, and follow the best
water-communication which offered itself from thence to the Pacific
ocean. Congress approved the proposition, and voted a sum of money for
carrying it into execution. Captain Lewis, who had then been near two
years with me as private secretary, immediately renewed his
solicitations to have the direction of the party. I had now had
opportunities of knowing him intimately. Of courage undaunted;
possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but
impossibilities could divert from its direction; careful as a father of
those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order
and discipline; intimate with the Indian character, customs, and
principles; habituated to the hunting life; guarded, by exact
observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country, against
losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest,
disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth
so scrupulous, that whatever he should report would be as certain as if
seen by ourselves; with all these qualifications, as if selected and
implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have
no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him. To fill up the measure
desired, he wanted nothing but a greater familiarity with the technical
language of the natural sciences, and readiness in the astronomical
observations necessary for the geography of his route. To acquire these
he repaired immediately to Philadelphia, and placed himself under the
tutorage of the distinguished professors of that place, who with a zeal
and emulation, enkindled by an ardent devotion to science, communicated
to him freely the information requisite for the purposes of the journey.
While attending too, at Lancaster, the fabrication of the arms with
which he chose that his men should be provided, he had the benefit of
daily communication with Mr. Andrew Ellicot, whose experience in
astronomical observation, and practice of it in the woods, enabled him
to apprise captain Lewis of the wants and difficulties he would
encounter, and of the substitutes and resources offered by a woodland
and uninhabited country.

Deeming it necessary he sho