subscription, and Mr. Wm. Locker then started for Deadwood to close the deal. Under ordinary circumstances he could have made the journey in ample time, with fortyeight hours to spare. It was early in November when he started, and as ill-luck would have it, a severe snowstorm set in, unusually early for that region, and Mr. Locker was detained between Cheyenne and Deadwood until thirty hours after the option had expired. The value of the property had been raised abroad and a syndicate of wealthy Californians had sent representatives to Deadwood to secure the prize if possible. They made an offer largely in advance of the price which the St. Louis party had the option to purchase and the Californians anxiously awaited the action of the St. Louis syndicate. “All of the last day that the option held good representatives of the California party were at the Deadwood bank and others at the stage office scanning the horizon and hoping that the St. Louisans would not put in an appearance, yet fearing that they might. It was a day of intense excitement to them, as they afterwards acknowledged, and when the sun sank below the western horizon and the St. Louisans came not the hearts of the Californians were gladdened. They immediately closed the contract at double the figure at which the mine could have been secured by the St. Louis syndicate, paid the cash, and the prize was theirs. "By this unfortunate delay the St. Louis party lost perhaps the richest mine in America! When the Californians secured it they immediately stocked it for ten millions of dollars." So far the story. The price paid was $400,000 and today the mill which was to reduce the inexhaustible body of ore, is running continuously upon ore taken from the Deadwood-Terry mines owned by the Homestake Com pany. BOOK IV. CHAPTER I. LEWIS AND CLARK'S EXPEDITION, ETC. Mr. Jefferson, while at Paris as American minister in 1787, met John Ledyard, who came to France to attempt a business arrangement in the fur trade of the northwest coast of America. Failing in this, Mr. Jefferson proposed to him a land expedition through Northern Europe to Kamtschatka and to the Pacific. Russia gave consent, and Ledyard at once set out and went into winter quarters 200 miles from Kamtschatka. Here he was stopped by the Russians and compelled, under arrest, to return. In 1792, Mr. Jefferson proposed a subscription by the American Philosophical Society to engage a person to go to the northwest coast by land. Captain Meriwether Lewis, then stationed at Charlotteville, Va., was engaged for this purpose. Mr. Micheaux, a French botanist, was to be his fellow explorer. They proceeded as far as Kentucky, when a message from the French minister at Washington recalled Mr. Micheaux, and the journey here terminated. On the 18th of January, prior to the Louisiana purchase, President Jefferson, in a confidential message to Congress (the act for establishing trading houses among the Indians being about to expire by limitation), recommended that the act be continued and extended to posts among the Indians on the Mississippi river, and that a party of explorers be sent up the Missouri river to its source, then to cross the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. This was approved, an appropriation made, and Captain Lewis at his own request, was detailed to command the expedition. First Lieut. William Clark, brother of General George Rogers Clark, was afterwards detailed with him. It was an expedition of discovery and inquiry. Its instructions were to notice and detail the geography and character of the country, to enter into negotiations with the Indians for commerce, and to describe their habits, characteristics and history. The party consisted of Meriwether Lewis, captain U. S. A., First Regiment Infantry (formerly Mr. Jefferson's secretary); William Clark, first-lieutenant U. S. A.; John Ordway, Nathaniel Prior and Patrick Gass, sergeants U. S. A.; Charles Floyd, William Bratton, John Colter, John Collins, Pierre Cruzarte, Robert Frazier, Joseph Fields, George Gibson, Silas Goodrich, Hugh Hall, Richard Worthington, Thomas P. Howard, Peter Wiser, John Baptiste Le Page, Francis Labuiche, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, John Shields, George Shanon, John B. Thompson, William Werner, Alexander Willard, Richard Witcher, Joseph Whitehouse, John Newman, George Drulyard, and Tousaint Chabono (the last two interpreters), the wife of the interpreter Chabono, a Snake squaw and her child, and "York," a colored servant to Captain Clark. President Jefferson himself prepared the written instruction for Captain Lewis. The party in boats entered the Missouri river, May 4th, 1804. They were the first party of American explorers to ascend the Missouri river into the land of the Dakotas; their printed journal affording to the world the earliest written description of the Northwest of the United States. During their westward journey, on the morning of the 27th of August, 1804, the expedition passed the mouth of the James river, when an Indian swam to their boats and informed them that a large body of Sioux were encamped in their immediate vicinity. Three men with an interpreter, were dispatched to the Sioux camp, while the boats proceeded on about eleven miles, where, on a beautiful plain, near Calumet Bluff, above where Yankton now stands, the party encamped and waited for the arrival |