"
The two captains were very busily employed, as soon as they arrived in
St. Louis, with writing letters to their friends and to the officers
of the government who were concerned to know of their safe return to
civilization. Captain Lewis' letter to the President of the United
States, announcing his arrival, was dated Sept. 23, 1806. President
Jefferson's reply was dated October 20 of that year. In his letter the
President expressed his "unspeakable joy" at the safe return of the
expedition. He said that the unknown scenes in which they had been
engaged and the length of time during which no tidings had been received
from them "had begun to be felt awfully." It may seem strange to modern
readers familiar with the means for rapid travel and communication that
no news from the explorers, later than that which they sent from the
Mandan country, was received in the United States until their return,
two years and four months later. But mail facilities were very scanty
in those far-off days, even in the settled portions of the Mississippi
Valley, and few traders had then penetrated to those portions of the
Lower Missouri that had just been travelled by Lewis and Clark. As we
have seen, white men were regarded with awe and curiosity by the natives
of the regions which the explorers traversed in their long absence. The
first post-office in what is now the great city of St. Louis was not
established until 1808; mails between the Atlantic seaboard and that
"village" required six weeks to pass either way.
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