"That poor man waded through over one million words of copy in the 'notes' he got hold of at last! But by then President Jefferson was getting anxious about it. By then, too, poor Lewis was dead, and Clark was busy at St. Louis as Indian agent. And Will Clark never was a writer. So, slip by slip, the material faded and scattered. "Biddle saved the most of it, boiling it down quite a lot. Then he gave it over to Paul Allen, a newspaper man, also of Philadelphia, who did more things to it, getting it ready for the press. This book did not get published until February, 1814, five years after Lewis died and eight years after they got back. By that time a lot of people had had a hack at it. A lot more have had a hack since then; but Biddle is the man who really saved the day, and Allen helped him very much. "Of late, inside of the last twenty or thirty years, many editions of that great _Journal_ have been issued. The best is the one that holds closest to Clark's spelling. That's the best. And I'll tell you it took genius, sometimes, to tell what he meant, for that redhead spelled by ear. "Look here--and here. 'Catholic' he spells 'Carthlick'; 'Loups'--the Indians--he calls 'Loos.' He spells 'gnat' 'knat,' or spells 'mosquito' 'musquitr,' and calls the 'tow rope' the 'toe rope'--as indeed Lewis did also. He spells 'squaw' as 'squar' always; and 'Sioux' he wrote down as 'Cuouex'--which makes one guess a bit--and the 'Osages' are 'Osarges,' the Iowas, 'Ayauways.' His men got 'deesantary' and 'tumers,' which were 'dificcelt to cure.' He gives a dog 'som meet,' and speaks of a storm which 'seased Instancetaniously.' He does a lot of odd things with big words and little ones, as spelling 'cedar' 'seeder'--at least the simplest way! As to jerked meat, I suppose it was as good if spelled 'jurked,' or even 'jirked,' and a 'tirkey' is as good as turkey, perhaps. "Plain and matter-of-fact, he was, that Redhead Chief, as the Indians called him; yet very little escaped him or his friend, and both could note the beauty of nature. See here, where Clark writes on June 20th (his capitals are odd as his spelling): 'at Sunset the atmesphier presented every appearance of wind, Blue and White Streeks centiring at the Sun as she disappeared and the Clouds Situated to the S. W. Guilded in the most butiful manner.' "Can't you see the sunset? And can't you see Will Clark, his tongue on one side, frowning as he wrote by the firelight? "And Lewis wasn't so much better. For instance, he spelled squirrel as 'squirril,' where Clark spells it 'squarl,' and he spells hawk 'halk,' and hangs a 'Meadle' on a chief's neck. Oh, this old _Journal_ certainly is a curious thing!" Jesse threw himself down on the sand in a fit of laughter. "I could do better'n that my own self," said he, at last. "Why, what sort of people were they, couldn't spell any better than that?"