Excerpt from Opening the West With Lewis and Clark: By Boat, Horse and Foot Up the Great River Missouri, Across the Stony Mountains and on the Pacific, When in the Years 1804, 1805, 1806, Young Captain Lewis the Long Knife and His Friend Captain Clark the Red Head Chief, Aided by Sacajawea the Bird-Woman The purchase of the Province of Louisiana was opposed by many citizens. They were ignorant and short-sighted; they asserted that here was a useless burden of waste land fitted only to the Indian and the fur-trader that the people of the United States should occupy themselves with the land east of the Mississippi. But wiser men prevailed. The expedition launched boldly out into the unknown, to carry the flag now into the new country, and perhaps to make possible the ownership of still a farther country, at the Pacific Ocean. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.