The three boys looked half in awe as they read over the names of these forgotten men. "Yes. So there they were," resumed Uncle Dick, gravely. "And here in the _Journal_ the very first sentence says the party was 'composed of robust, healthy, hardy young men.' Well, that's the sort I've got along with me, what?" "But Uncle Dick--Uncle Dick--" broke in Jesse, excitedly, "your book is all wrong! Just look at the way the spelling is! It's awful. It wasn't that way in the copies we had." "That's because this is a real and exact copy of what they really did write down," said Uncle Dick. "Yours must have been one of the rewritten and much-edited volumes. To my mind, that's a crime. Here's the real thing. "Listen!" he added, suddenly, holding the volume close to him. "Would you like to know something about those two young chaps, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, and what became of their _Journals_ after they got home? You'd hardly believe it." "Tell us," said Rob. Uncle Dick opened his book on his knee, as they all sat on the rail of the _Adventurer_. "They were soldiers, both of them, fighting men. Lewis had some education, and his mind was very keen. He was the private secretary of President Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson says he was not 'regularly educated.' He studied some months in astronomy and other scientific lines, under Mr. Andrew Ellicott, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the special purpose of fitting himself to lead this expedition. Mr. Ellicott had experience in astronomical observation, and practice of it in the woods, the record says. "Lewis was better educated than Clark, who was four years the older--thirty-three--while Lewis was twenty-nine. He spells better than Clark, who is about as funny as Josh Billings, though he certainly spelled his best. Of one thing you can be sure, whenever you see anything of the _Journal_ spelled correctly, it is false and spurious--that's not the original, for spelling was the one thing those two fellows couldn't do. "They used to make field notes, rough, just as you boys do. Clark had an elk-skin cover to his book--and that little book disappeared for over one hundred years. It was found in the possession of some distant relatives, descendants, by name of Voorhis, only just about ten years ago. "At night, by the camp fire, the two officers would write out their field notes, for they had to report very fully to President Jefferson. Sometimes one wrote, sometimes the other, and often one would copy the other's notes. Only the originals could make all that plain. And, alas! not all the original work is known to exist. "No one seems to have valued the written record of that wonderful trip. When the young men got to St. Louis on their return, they did try to make a connected book of it all, but no one valued that book, and they couldn't get a publisher--think of that! But at last they did get an editor, Mr. Nicholas Biddle, he was, of Philadelphia.