to procure the completion before the 31st of August." Loading the boat the instant it was done, they set out at four o'clock in the morning, with John Collins of Maryland, and George Gibson, Hugh McNeal, John Potts, and Peter Wiser, of Pennsylvania, recruits that had been ordered from Carlisle. Peter Wiser is believed to have been a descendant of that famous Conrad Weiser who gave his life to pacifying the Indian.
By this time the water was low. "On board my boat opposite Marietta, Sept. 13," Lewis writes,—"horses or oxen—I find the most efficient sailors in the present state of navigation," dragging the bateaux over shallows of drift and sandbars.
And yet that same Spring, when the water was high, Marietta had sent out the schooners "Dorcas and Sally," and the "Mary Avery," one hundred and thirty tons, with cheers and firing of cannon. When Lewis passed, a three-mast brig of two hundred and fifty tons and a smaller one of ninety tons were on the point of being finished to launch the following Spring, with produce for Philadelphia.
George Shannon was a handsome boy, already full grown but with the beardless pink and white of youth. His cap would not fit down over his curls, but lifted like his own hopes. Nothing would start the boats at daylight like his jolly, rollicking
Blow, blow, blow,"
rolling across the tints of sunrise. His cheeks glowed, his blue eyes shone to meet the wishes of his captain.
Past the fairy isle of Blennerhassett with its stately mansion half-hid behind avenues of Lombardy poplar and tasteful shrubbery, Captain Lewis came on down to Fort Washington, Cincinnati, where brigs had lately taken on cargoes and sailed to the West Indies.
Bones? Of course Lewis wanted to look at bones and send some to the learned President. Dr. Goforth of Cincinnati was sinking a pit at the Big Bone Li
