By boat up the Potomac River from Washington hastened young Captain Lewis, to pack his arms and supplies at Harper’s Ferry, and forward them by wagon for Pittsburg. He got to Pittsburg ahead of them; and there remained until the last of August, overseeing the building of a barge or flat-boat. He enlisted some men, too――six of them, picked with care, and sworn into the service of the United States Army. On August 31, with his recruits, on his laden flat-boat he launched out to sail, row, and float, towed by oxen (a “horn breeze,” this was termed), down the Ohio. At Mulberry Hill, near Louisville, Captain William Clark was impatiently awaiting. He had enlisted nine men, all of Kentucky, the “dark and bloody ground.” If any men could be relied on, they would be Kentuckians, he knew. His negro servant, York, who had been his faithful body-guard since boyhood, was going, too. Captain Clark took charge of the barge, to proceed with it and the recruits and York down the Ohio into the Mississippi, and thence up the Mississippi to St. Louis. Captain Lewis turned across country, by horse, on a short cut, to pick up more men along the way. He struck the Mississippi River fifty miles below St. Louis, where the United States Army post of Kaskaskia faced the Province of Louisiana across the river. Here he enlisted four men more, selected from a score that eagerly volunteered. Word of the great expedition had travelled ahead of him, and he could have filled the ranks seven times over. But only the strongest, and those of clean reputation, could qualify for such a trip. These thought themselves fortunate. Now up along the river, by military road, hastened Captain Lewis, for the old town of Cahokia, and crossed the river to St. Louis at last. He was in a hurry. “We’ll winter at La Charette, Captain,” he had said to Captain Clark, “where Daniel Boone lives. Boone can give us valuable information, and we’ll be that far on our journey, ready for spring. Charette will be better for our men than St. Louis.” Glad was Captain Clark to spend the months at La Charette. Daniel Boone had been his boyhood friend in Kentucky――had taught him much wood-craft. But when, in mid-December, Captain Clark, the redhead, anxious to push on to La Charette, seventy miles up the Missouri, before the ice closed, with York and his nine Kentuckians and five other recruits whom he had enlisted from Fort Massac at the mouth of the Ohio tied his keel-boat at the St. Louis levee, he was met by disagreeable information. “We’ll have to winter here,” informed Captain Lewis. “The Spanish lieutenant-governor won’t pass us on. He claims that he has not been officially notified yet to transfer Upper Louisiana to the United States――or, for that matter, even to France. So all we can do is to make winter camp on United States soil, on the east side of the river, and wait. I’m sorry――I’ve engaged two more boats――but that’s the case.”