April passed; May arrived. The Missouri was reported free of ice, and was rising rapidly. The trees had budded and greened, the grasses were getting high, game would be plentiful, the Indians would be leaving their villages for their spring hunts, and ’twas time that the expedition should start. In their camp at Wood River the men drew on the supply of quill pens, ink horns and paper and wrote farewell letters home. In St. Louis Captain Clark and Captain Lewis were given farewell dinners. By Doctor Saugrain, the learned physician and scientist under whom he was studying, Captain Lewis was presented with a handful of matches――curious little sticks which, when briskly rubbed against something, burst into flame. The Indians would marvel at these. Shortly before four o’clock in the afternoon of May 14, this 1804, the start was made. The St. Louis people gathered along the river bank on that side, to watch the boats move up. The blunderbuss was discharged, in salute; the cannon of the fort answered. Captain Clark, bidding goodbye from the deck of the keel-boat, was in full dress uniform of red-trimmed blue coat and trousers, and gold epaulets, his sword at his belt, his three-cornered chapeau on his red head. The sails swelled in the breeze, the men at the oars sang in French and shouted in English. Drewyer the hunter rode one horse and led the other. All, save Captain Clark, were dressed for business――Corporal Warfington’s squad from St. Louis in United States uniform, the nine Kentuckians in buckskins, the fourteen soldiers and civilians, enlisted at the posts, in flannel shirts and trousers of buckskin or coarse army cloth, the French boatmen in brightly fringed woollens, with scarlet ’kerchiefs about their heads. Rain was falling, but who cared! Captain Lewis did not accompany. He was detained to talk more with the Osages who had come down. He hoped yet to make things clear to them. But he would join the boats at the village of St. Charles, twenty miles above. In the sunshine of May 16 they tied to the bank at St. Charles. At the report of the cannon――boom!――the French villagers, now Americans all, came running down and gave welcome. Sunday the 20th Captain Lewis arrived by skiff from St. Louis, and with him an escort of the St. Louis people, again to cheer the expedition on its way. Not until Monday afternoon, the 21st, was the expedition enabled to tear itself from the banquets and hand-shakings, and onward fare in earnest, against the wind and rain.