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Setting Forth
I dispatched an express this morning to Captain Lewis at St. Louis. All our provisions, goods, and equipage on board of a boat of 22 oars [party], a large pirogue of 71 oars [in which 8 French], a second pirogue of 6 oars [soldiers], complete with sails, &c. Men completed with powder cartridges and 100 balls each, all in health and readiness to set out. (The words and phrases in brackets did not appear in the original journals. They represent additions or corrections made by several people between 1806 and the present, including Clark himself, who edited the journals before the first publication. Words and phrases in parentheses were in parentheses in the journals as originally written.) Boats and everything complete, with the necessary stores of provisions and such articles of merchandise as we thought ourselves authorized to procure-though not as much as I think necessary for the multitude of Indians through which we must pass on our road across the continent.
Captain Clark, River Dubois opposite the mouth of the Missouri River, 13 May 1804
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