Shorter Notice
The journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, United States Army, as they made their )vay up the Missouri, down the Columbia to the Pacific and back to the United States between 1804 and 1806, form one of the great American stories of exploration. Mr. DeVoto has reduced the seven volumes published in 1906 to a single thoroughly readable book.
The real purpose of their mission was to extend American influence and build trade with the Indians. One of its most important results, of course, was to give the people of the United States a new vision of where their destiny might lie. Lewis and Clark thought as traders thought; they sought peace and prosperity among the Indians, not their destruction. As they travelled they found that to be white was to be recognised as a man who comes in peace. This phase was soon to end.
It is unfortunate that the sub-title on the dust cover should read: 'the dramatic story of the first journey across North America to the Pacific.' Lewis and Clark reached the Pacific overland more than a decade after Alekander Mackenzie, and in his excellent introduction Mr. DeVoto gives the daring and ambitious Scots of Montreal full credit. In fact he tells us that Voyages from Montreal, Mackenzie's book published in 1801, had 'conclusive force with the President' (Jeffer- son) whose child the expedition was.
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