e humblest of its citizens had
taken a lively interest in the issue of this journey, and looked forward
with impatience for the information it would furnish. Their anxieties
too for the safety of the corps had been kept in a state of excitement
by lugubrious rumours, circulated from time to time on uncertain
authorities, and uncontradicted by letters, or other direct information,
from the time they had left the Mandan towns, on their ascent up the
river in April of the preceding year, 1805, until their actual return to
St. Louis.

It was the middle of February, 1807, before captain Lewis, with his
companion captain Clarke, reached the city of Washington, where congress
was then in session. That body granted to the two chiefs and their
followers the donation of lands which they had been encouraged to expect
in reward of their toil and dangers. Captain Lewis was soon after
appointed governor of Louisiana, and captain Clarke a general of its
militia, and agent of the United States for Indian affairs in that
department.

A considerable time intervened before the governor's arrival at St.
Louis. He found the territory distracted by feuds and contentions among
the officers of the government, and the people themselves divided by
these into factions and parties. He determined at once to take no side
with either; but to use every endeavour to conciliate and harmonize
them. The even-handed justice he administered to all soon established a
respect for his person and authority; and perseverance and time wore
down animosities, and reunited the citizens again into one family.

Governor Lewis had, from early life, been subject to hypochondriac
affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer
branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited
by him from his father. They had not, however, been so strong as to give
uneasiness to his family. While he lived with me in Washington I
observed at times sensible depressions of mind: but knowing their
constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in
the family. During his western expedition, the constant exertion which
that required of all the faculties of body and mind, suspended these
distressing affections; but after his establishment at St. Louis in
sedentary occupations, they returned upon him with redoubled vigour, and
began seriously to alarm his friends. He was in a paroxysm of one of
these, when his affairs rendered it necess