Model Expedition

LEWIS AND CLARK: PARTNERS IN DEMOCRACY (512 pp.)--John Bakeless--Morrow ($5).

On May 14, 1804, the Lewis & Clark expedition set out from its camp near St. Louis, with a crew of 42 men. They carried all the latest astronomical equipment, arms for trouble, and 21 bales of presents--looking glasses, beads, 500 brooches and 432 curtain rings for Indian earrings--total cost: $2,160.41. Two years and 132 days later, the expedition returned from a country as little known as the moon. It came back intact, except for the loss of one man who died, probably of appendicitis, 98 days after the journey began.

No account can make the 7,689-mile journey of Lewis & Clark seem dull, nor has any account, including this one, ever quite seemed to do it justice.

Surrealist Landscapes. A sense of wonder pervaded the journals that Lewis & Clark kept. They expected to find mammoths and perhaps stranger prehistoric creatures. There was said to be a mountain of solid rock salt somewhere along their way, 180 miles long and 45 miles wide. They came into a land where they were shut in by steel-blue mountains, so alike that they seemed to have come into a country of mirrors. Once Meriwether Lewis, exploring alone the Great Falls of the Missouri, found himself studying the water foaming over the high masses of rocks. Below him the Missouri stretched in one unruffled stream of water, flowing between smooth, grassy banks, "bearing on its bosom vast flocks of geese, while numerous herds of buffalo are feeding on the plains which surround it." His diary brimmed with these strange, lonely scenes.

They came to country so like what they had passed through that they felt they were journeying through echoes. Sometimes they saw herds of buffalo so vast that the prairie trembled with the incessant roaring of the bulls. The men made nets of brush and in a few minutes scooped over 500 fish from the river. High in the mountains, the Indian guides did not build campfires, but set fire to a huge tree that blazed up in the darkness, a mighty beacon glaring over the apparent top of the world, thousands of miles from civilization. The wilderness shook the sense of reality.

Romantic Heroes. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were romantics, Jeffersonian idealists, enthusiastic, ardent, poetic, hopeful, trusting. They named the tributaries of the Jefferson River Philosophy, Wisdom and Philanthropy. But their men, the soldiers and hunters in the party, were down-to-earth, matter-of-fact characters. They liked to race ponies with the Indians, carouse with their squaws, dance square dances whenever they made camp.

Their narrow escapes were uncanny. Lewis tumbled from a 300-ft. cliff and caught himself 20 feet from the top. A private was thrown from his horse almost atop a grizzly, hit it over the head with his rifle butt and escaped. Their escapes were even narrower than they knew. They built their blockhouse at Fort Mandan, some 1,100 miles up the Missouri, just before the Sioux held a war council. After they crossed the Rockies and were resting, exhausted, before descending the Pacific slope, the Nez Perce Indians decided to wipe them out. The Nez Perces were dissuaded (according to tribal tradition) by a squaw who had once been befriended by some white trappers.

Careful Officers. Romantic as they were, Lewis & Clark were practical soldiers. Their concern for the health of the men, their cautious surveys, their aloofness from the dissipations of the soldiers (who contracted venereal diseases from the Indians in the Dakotas and on the Oregon coast), above all, their resolute faith in their eventual success, made them ideal commanders.

Bakeless has written a readable account of their journey, told as an efficient military operation. Their personalities emerge dimly; readers may grow confused about what happened to Lewis and what happened to Clark. The poetry and wild enthusiasm of their own journals is missing from this book.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.