Part 15

He wrote a paper that was the very beginning of the United States. It was a paper that said that we would be free from England, and be a coun-try by our-selves. We call that paper the Dec-la-ra-tion of In-de-pend-ence.

When he was a boy, Jef-fer-son was fond of boyish plays. But when he was tired of play, he took up a book. It pleased him to learn things. From the time when he was a boy he never sat down to rest without a book.

At school he learned what other boys did. But the dif-fer-ence between him and most other boys was this: he did not stop with knowing just what the other boys knew. Most boys want to learn what other boys learn. Most girls would like to know what their school-mates know. But Jef-fer-son wanted to know a great deal more.

As a young man, Jefferson knew Latin and Greek. He also knew French and Span-ish and I-tal-ian.

He did not talk to show off what he knew. He tried to learn what other people knew. When he talked to a wagon maker, he asked him about such things as a wagon maker knows most about. He would sometimes ask how a wagon maker would go to work to make a wheel.

When Jefferson talked to a learn-ed man, he asked him about those things that this man knew most about. When he talked with Indians, he got them to tell him about their lan-guage. That is the way he came to know so much about so many things. Whenever anybody told him anything worth while, he wrote it down as soon as he could.

One day Jefferson was trav-el-ing. He went on horse-back. That was a common way of trav-el-ing at that time. He stopped at a country tavern. At this tavern he talked with a stranger who was staying there.

After a while Jefferson rode away. Then the stranger said to the land-lord, “Who is that man? He knew so much about law, that I was sure he was a lawyer. But when we talked about med-i-cine, he knew so much about that, that I thought he must be a doctor. And after a while he seemed to know so much about re-li-gion, that I was sure he was a min-is-ter. Who is he?”

The stranger was very much surprised to hear that the man he had talked with was Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson was a very polite man. One day his grand-son was riding with him. They met a negro. The negro lifted his cap and bowed. Jefferson bowed to the negro. But his grand-son did not think it worth while to bow.

Then Jefferson said to his grand-son, “Do not let a poor negro be more of a gen-tle-man than you are.” In the Dec-la-ra-tion of In-de-pend-ence, Jefferson wrote these words: “All men are created equal.” He also said that the poor man had the same right as the rich man to live, and to be free, and to try to make himself happy.

A LONG JOURNEY.

A long time ago, when Thomas Jefferson was Pres-i-dent, most of the people in this country lived in the East. Nobody knew anything about the Far West. The only people that lived there were Indians. Many of these Indians had never seen a white man.

The Pres-i-dent sent men to travel into this wild part of the country. He told them to go up to the upper end of the Mis-sou-ri River. Then they were to go across the Rocky Mountains. They were to keep on till they got to the Pa-cif-ic O-cean. Then they were to come back again. They were to find out the best way to get through the mountains. And they were to find out what kind of people the Indians in that country were. They were also to tell about the animals.

There were two captains of this company. Their names were Lewis and Clark. There were forty-five men in the party.

They were gone two years and four months. For most of that time they did not see any white men but their own party. They did not hear a word from home for more than two years.

They got their food mostly by hunting. They killed a great many buf-fa-loes and elks and deer. They also shot wild geese and other large birds. Sometimes they had nothing but fish to eat. Sometimes they had to eat wolves. When they had no other meat, they were glad to buy dogs from the Indians and eat them. Sometimes they ate horses. They became fond of the meat of dogs and horses.

When they were very hungry, they had to live on roots if they could get them. Some of the Indians made a kind of bread out of roots. The white men bought this when they could not get meat. But there were days when they did not have anything to eat.

They were very friendly with the Indians. One day some of the men went to make a visit to an Indian village. The Indians gave them something to eat.

In the Indian wig-wam where they were, there was a head of a dead buffalo. When dinner was over, the Indians filled a bowl full of meat. They set this down in front of the head. Then they said to the head, “Eat that.”

The Indians believed, that, if they treated this buffalo head politely, the live buffaloes would come to their hunting ground. Then they would have plenty of meat. They think the spirit of the buffalo is a kind of a god. They are very careful to please this god.

CAPTAIN CLARK’S BURNING GLASS.

The Indians among whom Captain Clark and Captain Lewis traveled had many strange ways of doing things. They had nothing like our matches for making fire. One tribe of Indians had this way of lighting a fire. An Indian would lay down a dry stick. He would rub this stick with the end of another stick. After a while this rubbing would make something like saw-dust on the stick that was lying down. The Indian would keep on rubbing till the wood grew hot. Then the fine wood dust would smoke. Then it would burn. The Indian would put a little kin-dling wood on it. Soon he would have a large fire.

In that time the white people had not yet found out how to make matches. They lighted a fire by striking a piece of flint against a piece of steel. This would make a spark of fire. By letting this spark fall on something that would burn easily, they started a fire.

White men had another way of lighting a fire when the sun was shining. They used what was called a burning glass. This was a round piece of glass. It was thick in the middle, and thin at the edge. When you held up a burning glass in the sun, it drew the sun’s heat so as to make a little hot spot. If you put paper under this spot of hot sunshine, it would burn. Men could light the to-bac-co in their pipes with one of these glasses.

Captain Clark had something funny happen to him on account of his burning glass. He had walked ahead of the rest of his men. He sat down on a rock. There were some Indians on the other side of the river. They did not see the captain. Captain Clark saw a large bird called a crane flying over his head. He raised his gun and shot it.

The Indians on the other side of the river had never seen a white man in their lives. They had never heard a gun. They used bows and arrows.

They heard the sound of Clark’s gun. They looked up and saw the large bird falling from the sky. It fell close to where Captain Clark sat. Just as it fell they caught sight of Captain Clark sitting on the rocks. They thought they had seen him fall out of the sky. They thought that the sound of his gun was a sound like thunder that was made when he came down.