VI
SERGEANT ORDWAY WRITES A LETTER
The winter of 1802-3 had been uncommonly severe. Unknown to George Shannon, that winter his father hunting in the dense woods of Ohio lost his way in a snow-storm and was frozen to death. Unaware of the tragedy at home, unaware also of his own inherited facility for getting lost, the boy set out up the winding staircase of the wild Missouri.
An older brother, John, nineteen years of age, became the stay of that widowed mother with her seven small children, the least a baby, Wilson Shannon, twice the future Governor of Ohio and once the Governor of Kansas.
With a pad on his knee every soldier boy wrote home from the camp on River Dubois opposite the mouth of the Missouri. Down through the years Sergeant Ordway's letter has come to us.
Camp River Dubois, April the 8th, 1804.Honoured Parents,—I now embrace this opportunity of writeing to you once more to let you know where I am and where I am going. I am well thank God and in high Spirits. I am now on an expedition to the westward, with Capt. Lewis and Capt. Clark, who are appointed by the President of the United States to go on an Expedition through the interior parts of North America. We are to ascend the Missouri River with a boat as far as it is navigable and then to go by land to the western ocean, if nothing prevents. This party consists of twenty-five picked men of the armey and country likewise and I am so happy as to be one of them picked from the armey and I and all the party are if we live to return to receive our discharge whenever we return again to the United States if we choose it. This place is on the Mississippi River opposite to the mouth of the Missouri River and we are to star
