corps of discovery

quintessentially american in idealism.

began the journals yesterday. truely remarkable.

reassuring to once again reconnect, especially given the contemporary context of FEAR suggested, encouraged and frankly championed by the current white house.

did i mention: they gotta go!

this is from Lewis, on april the seventh 1805, after spending the winter on the plains of missouri, about to head further west, where, as he points out, the map was dark.


Our vessels consisted of six small canoes and two large pirogues. This little fleet, although not quite so respectable as that of Columbus or Captain Cook, was still viewed by us with as much pleasure as those deservedly famed adventurers ever beheld theirs, and, I daresay, with quite as much anxiety for their safety and preservation. We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trod. The good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However, as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one.