He
proved to be so capable and enterprising that the President selected him
for this dangerous and arduous task of exploration. With him was
associated Lieutenant William Clark, a brother of that hardy adventurer,
George Rogers Clark.
William Clark, who was eighteen years younger than his famous brother,
had joined him in Kentucky in 1784, at the age of fourteen, and soon
became acquainted with the perils of Indian warfare. He was appointed
ensign in the army four years later, and rose to the rank of adjutant,
but was compelled to resign, from the service in 1796, on account of
ill-health. He settled at the half-Spanish town of St. Louis, and in
March, 1804, was appointed by President Jefferson a second lieutenant of
artillery, with orders to join Captain Lewis in his journey to the
Pacific. Clark was really the military director of the expedition, and
his knowledge of Indian life and character had much to do with its
success.
The party consisted of twenty-eight men, and in the spring of 1804,
started up the Missouri, following it until late in October, when they
camped for the winter near the present site of Bismarck, North. Dakota.
They resumed the journey early in the spring, and in May, caught their
first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Reaching the headwaters of the
Columbia, at last, they floated down its current, and on the morning of
November 7, 1806, after a journey of a year and a half, full of every
sort of hardship and adventure, they saw ahead of them the blue expanse
of the Pacific.
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