Biddle performed the major part of the editing, and then Paul Allen, a journalist, supervised the printing. After many vicissitudes, the work was published in February, 1814. Much of the scientific material, however, was not included; nor was a strictly accurate account of the expedition and its results ever given to the world until the recent edition (1904-1905) of the Original Journals by Dr. Thwaites. Of the first edition, about 1400 copies were circulated, from the sale of which Clark apparently received nothing. Though the authentic work became popular in America and Europe, being reprinted and translated, the initial delay in publication, and the presence of other diarists in the party, made room for more than one earlier account of the expedition—if or example, the Journal of Patrick Gass, of which there were five editions before 1814, as well as a French and a German translation in that year. However made known, the achievement of Lewis and Clark has won greater fame than any other geographical exploration ever undertaken within the United States proper. The Government expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains in 1819, under the command of Major Long, was more fruitful in technical results; and with the vast, though unmethodical, accumulations of Schoolcraft the data on Indians in the records edited by Biddle are not to be compared in value. But the authorized account of Jefferson's great enterprise, published in the concluding year of the final war with England, marked the fulfilment of Carver's vision, and betokened the approaching establishment of the United States as the ruling power in the Western Hemisphere.
When the strife of arms was settled by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, a literary war between Great Britain and America burst into flame. It had long been smouldering. In the Travels of the Rev. Andrew Bumaby, of the Church of England, there was little to offend the jealous or sensitive American. This genial clergyman went through the “Middle Settlements," beginning with Virginia, in 1759 and 1760. His slender volume, published in 1775, had reached a third edition by 1798, being revised and enlarged, and was still valued in 1812 when Pinkerton chose it for his collection of travels in all parts of the world. Bumaby's affection for the colonies is only second to his love of England. He balances the advantages and disadvantages of North and
