XIV
"FOR OUR CHILDREN, OUR CHILDREN!"
As soon as the Indian scare was silenced, all the world seemed rushing to Missouri. Ferries ran by day and night. Patriarchal planters of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia passed ever west in long, unending caravans of flocks, servants, herds, into the new land of the Louisianas. New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, six, eight, and ten horses to a waggon, and cattle with their hundred bells, tinkled through the streets of St. Louis.
"Where are you going, now?" inquired the citizens.
"To Boone's Lick, to be sure."
"Go no further," said Clark, ever enthusiastic about St. Louis. "Buy here. This will be the city."
"But ah!" exclaimed the emigrant. "If land is so good here what must Boone's Lick be!"
Perennial childhood of the human heart, ever looking for Canaan just beyond!
The Frenchmen shrugged their shoulders at the strange energy of these progressive "Bostonnais." It annoyed them to have their land titles looked into. "A process! a lawsuit!" they clasped their hands in despair. But ever the people of St. Louis put up their lands to a better figure, and watched out of their little square lattices for the coming of les Américains.
All the talk was of land, land, land! The very wealth of ancient estates lay unclaimed for the first heir to enter, the gift of God.
In waggons, on foot and horseback, with packhorses, handcarts, and wheelbarrows, with blankets on their backs and children by the hand, the oppressed of the old world fled across the new.
"Why do you go into the wilderness?"
"For my children, my children," answered the pioneer.
