Part One Chapter 10 The Threshold of the West

As he looked at this commerce of the great West, pondered its limitations, saw its trend with the down-slant of the perpetual roadway to the sea, there came to the young officer's mind with greater force certain arguments that had been advanced to him.

He saw that here was the heart of America, realized how natural was the insistence of all these hardy Western men upon the free use of the Mississippi and its tributaries. He easily could agree with Aaron Burr that, had the fleet of Napoleon ever sailed from Haiti--had Napoleon ever done otherwise than to cede Louisiana to us--then these boats from the Ohio and the Mississippi would at this very moment, perhaps, be carrying armed men down to take New Orleans, as so often they had threatened.

There came, however, to his mind not the slightest thought of alteration in his own plans. With him it was no question of what might have been, but of what actually was. The cession by Napoleon had been made, and Louisiana was ours. It was time to plot for expeditions, not down the great river, but across it, beyond it, into that great and unknown country that lay toward the farther sea.

The keen zest of this vast enterprise came to him as a stimulus--the feel of the new country was as the breath of his nostrils. His bosom swelled with joy as he looked out toward that West which had so long allured him--that West of which he was to be the discoverer. The carousing riffraff of the wharfs, the flotsam and jetsam of the river trade, were to him but passing phenomena. He shouldered his way among them indifferently. He walked with a larger vision before his eyes.