But Jefferson was above all things a man of peace. In the We try to hope of preventing the threatened war he sent James Monroe buy New Orleans to France to aid Robert R. Livingston, our minister in that country, in an effort to buy New Orleans. In the meantime, as we have seen, Napoleon was eager to sell what he had been unable to occupy. One day when Livingston and Talleyrand, Napoleon's minister of foreign affairs, were talking about the purchase of New Orleans, Talleyrand said, "What would you give for all Louisiana?" Livingston replied that he was daily expecting Monroe and that

he would like to think about it until the latter arrived.

Two days later Monroe reached Paris. Livingston and Monroe were not instructed to buy all of Louisiana, but they knew its great value to their country and quickly came to terms with the French ministers. For $15,000,000 France agreed to cede to the United States the western half of the most valuable river valley in the world. The treaty which doubled the area of the United States was signed on May 2, 1803. As Livingston laid down his pen after signing his name he shook hands with Monroe and the French minister, and said, "We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our lives."

Taking Possession of Louisiana

The

Louisiana
Purchase

New Orleans

The Occupation and Exploration of Louisiana.-On November 30, 1803, the Spanish flag was lowered for the last time in New Orleans, and the French banner was run up in Our flag its stead as a symbol of the formal transfer of Louisiana to France. Just twenty days later a small force of American soldiers marched into the city to take possession of the territory in the name of the United States. In the presence of a vast crowd the Tricolor of France was gently lowered from

its place and carried away by a guard of old French soldiers while the Stars and Stripes were flung to the breeze from the top of the staff. The ceremony of American occupation ended with a speech by the new American governor to the assembled Louisianians, whom he called, "My fellow citizens."

The vast domain acquired by the Louisiana purchase had

a population of about fifty thousand in 1803, nearly all of whom Government lived upon the banks of the lower Mississippi and Red rivers. in Louisiana Congress soon gave this inhabited region a territorial form of government, and in 1812 the state of Louisiana with its present boundaries was admitted into the Union.

Lewis and Clark sent to explore the West

Their trip up the

Missouri

Outside the settlements in the present state of Louisiana and a few little French villages in Missouri, the old French province of Louisiana was an unknown wilderness. Jefferson had long been interested in western exploration, and after 1803 he had an added reason for searching out the extent and nature of the country beyond the Mississippi. He now sent two young army officers, Meriwether Lewis, who had been his private secretary, and William Clark, a brother of George Rogers Clark, to ascend the Missouri River and, if possible, to cross the continent to the Pacific. It would have been hard to find two men better fitted for the dangerous task before them. Lewis and Clark were daring and resolute yet wise and tactful in dealing with the Indians, whose friendship they must win if they were to succeed in their hazardous purpose. They were also careful observers of the physical features, plants, and animals of the country through which they passed, and skilled in reporting plainly what they saw.

In May, 1804, Lewis and Clark started up the Missouri River with forty-five men in three boats. Soon they left the last settlement behind them. Their journey was slow and filled with toil, for the current against which they strove was swift and the river was filled with snags. At night they were pestered almost beyond endurance by swarms of gnats and mosquitoes. They depended upon game for their food, but they lived well for they were traveling through a paradise for hunters, a land swarming with buffaloes, elk, deer, and wild turkeys. They had some trouble with the Indians along the way, but the firmness and good sense of the leaders averted any serious danger. The approach of cold weather found them

sixteen hundred miles up the Missouri in the land of the Mandan Indians, near the present Bismarck, North Dakota. Here they built a fort and passed the winter.

In April, 1805, Lewis and Clark again pushed forward, this time in small canoes, until they traced the Missouri to its

source in the Rocky Mountains. During this part of their They reach journey they were much troubled by ferocious grizzly bears. the Pacific An Indian squaw called the

Bird Woman, the wife of a
French hunter in their
party, was very helpful to
Lewis and Clark at this
stage of their work. Years
before the Bird Woman had
been kidnaped from а
mountain tribe. She now
found her kindred, who sold
horses to the explorers and
showed them a trail through
the mountains. After many
hardships the party reached
a stream which flows into
the Columbia. Here they
built canoes and floated
with the current until they
reached the Pacific Ocean.
After a winter in camp near
the shore of the Pacific
Lewis and Clark retraced
their course and reached
St. Louis in safety in September, 1806. Their expedition was
one of the most remarkable in the history of American explo-
ration.

While Lewis and Clark were crossing the continent another young army officer, Zebulon N. Pike, led two important explor

ing parties into the newly acquired Louisiana country. In 1805 Pike's he ascended the Mississippi River and spent the winter exploring explorations the lake region of Minnesota, though he did not find the true source of the Mississippi. In 1806 Pike crossed the plains of Kansas to the Arkansas River, which he traced to the Rocky