"Good! We'll consider that settled and get down to details as quickly as possible. I should like to get started in about two weeks, which will be early in August. We'll call another meeting in a few days and I'll have a list of the articles needed and their cost ready to submit to you. I know where we can get tents, but there are a whole lot of things we shall need in the woods, besides things to eat. Is there any more business to come before the meeting, Mr. Chairman?" "There is," said Skinny, who had been scribbling something on a piece of paper. He handed it to me to read, and this is what it said: "Resolved, that Mr. Norton is great stuff." "All that are in favor of the motion salute the Scoutmaster." That ended the meeting. We had to have several more like it before we could get everything ready for the trip. "It is early yet," said Mr. Norton. "If you would like to have me, I'll tell you a story about what I think was one of the greatest scouting trips ever undertaken." CHAPTER XV SCOUTING IN THE GREAT NORTHWEST "SOME of you boys went out to Illinois, last summer," he began. "Did you go as far as the Mississippi River?" "No, but we camped out on the Illinois River," I told him, "and that flows into the Mississippi." "We explored," explained Benny, "just like LaSalle and Tonty and the other guys did. Skinny was LaSalle and I was Tonty." "LaSalle and Tonty were great scouts. Do you remember when they made those early explorations?" "I think it was somewhere around 1680 or 1681," said Skinny, who was always good in history. "Mr. Baxter told us all about it while we were sitting on top of Starved Rock, where LaSalle once had a fort." "There was a great country west of the Mississippi, about which LaSalle knew very little, although when he explored the river he took possession of the land in the name of his king, and he called the country Louisiana. "At that time, with the exception of a few fur traders and missionaries, all the people who came to America from the Old World settled along the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes, in various colonies. Some of these afterward became the thirteen original states of the United States of America. "After Thomas Jefferson became president, he had a chance to buy Louisiana of Napoleon, who was then at the head of the French government, and he did so." "Huh! Napoleon!" said Skinny. "George Washington could lick----" "Aw, ferget it, can't you?" said Bill. "You are stopping the story." "That gave us a vast territory, reaching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. Nobody knew very much about it, or about the country west of the Rockies. Jefferson may have been looking far into the future when he made the Louisiana purchase, but probably his more immediate purpose was to secure undisputed possession of the wonderful Mississippi River.