us on. He claims that he has not been officially notified yet to transfer Upper Louisiana to the United States—or, for that matter, even to France. So all we can do is to make winter camp on United States soil, on the east side of the river, and wait. I'm sorry—I've engaged two more boats—but that's the case."
"All right," assented Captain Clark. "Both sides of the river are ours, but I suppose we ought to avoid trouble."
So the winter camp was placed near the mouth of Wood River, on the east bank of the Mississippi, about twenty miles above St. Louis. Log cabins were erected; and besides, the big keel-boat was decked fore and aft, and had a cabin and men's quarters. Consequently nobody need suffer from the cold.
Captain Lewis stayed most of the time in St. Louis, arranging for supplies, studying medicine, astronomy, botany and other sciences, and learning much about the Indians up the Missouri. Captain Clark looked after the camp, and drilled the men almost every day.
St. Louis was then forty years old; it contained less than 200 houses, of stone and log, and about 1000 people, almost all French. The lieutenant-governor, who lived here in charge of Upper Louisiana of "the Illinois Country" (as all this section was called), was Don Carlos Dehault Delassus, also of French blood, but appointed by Spain.
Indignant now was Spain, objecting to the new ownership by the United States, and asserting that by
