1821.  Governor Clinton offered me the use of his library while preparing my journal for the press.  Mr. Henry Inman, who was then beginning to paint, re-drew some of the views.  One of the leading booksellers made me favorable proposals, which I agreed early in January to accept.  I began to transcribe my journal on the 8th of the month, and very assiduously devoted myself to that object, sending off the sheets hurriedly as they were written.  The engravings were immediately put in hands.  In this way, the work went rapidly on; and I kept up, at the same time, an industrious correspondence with scientific men in various places.

It was at this time an object of moment, doubtless, that the results of this expedition should have been combined in an elaborate and joint work by the scientific gentlemen of the party.  The topography and astronomy had been most carefully attended to by Captain Douglass, and the materials collected for an improved map.  Its geology and mineralogy had formed the topic of my daily notes.  Its aboriginal population had been seen under circumstances rarely enjoyed.  Its fresh water conchology had been carefully observed by Douglass and myself, and fine collections made.  Something had been done respecting its botany, and the whole chain of events was ready to be linked together in a striking manner.

But there was no one to take the initiative.  Governor Cass, who had led the expedition, did not think of writing.  Professor Douglass, who was my senior, and who occupied the post of topographer, by no means underrated the subject, but deferred it, and, by accepting the Professorship of Mathematics at West Point, assumed a duty which made it literally impossible, though he did not see it immediately, that he should do justice to his own notes.  I simply went forward because no one of the members of the expedition offered to.  I had kept a journal from the first to the last day, which I believe no one else had.  I had been diligent in the morning and evening in observing every line of coast and river.  I never allowed the sun to catch me asleep in my canoe or boat.  I had kept the domestic, as well as the more grave and important events.  I was importuned to give them to the public.  I had written to Douglass about it, but he was dilatory in answering me, and when at last he did, and approved my suggestion for a joint work in which our observations should be digested, it was too late, so far as my narrative went, to withdraw it from my publishers.  But I pledged to him at once my geological and mineralogical reports, and I promptly sent him my portfolio of sketches to embellish his map.  This is simply the history of the publication of my narrative journal.

My position was, at this time, personally agreeable.  My room was daily visited by literary and scientific men.  I was invited to the mansions of distinguished men, who spoke of my recent journey as one implying enterprise.  Nothing, surely, when I threw myself into the current of western emigration, in 1817, was farther from my thoughts than my being an instrumental cause, to much extent, in stirring up and awakening a zeal for scientific explorations and researches.  The diurnal press, however, gave this tone to the thing.  The following is an extract:—­[10]