Meriwether Lewis: September 8, 1803

8^th this day wrote to the President, purchased a perogue and hired a man to work her, my men were much fatiegued and I concluded it would be better to give them a day[’s] rest and let them wash their cloths and exchange their flour for bread or bake their their bread in a better manner than they had the means of baking it while traveling; dined with Col^o Rodney and and his suit, in the evening they walked down to my boat and partook of some watermellons. I here also met with D^r Patterson the son of the professor of mathematicks in the University of Philad^a he expressed a great desire to go with me I consented provided he could get ready by three the next evening he thought he could and instantly set about it; I told the D^r that I had a letter of appointment for a second Lieut. which I could give him but did not feel myself altogether at liberty to use it as it was given me by the President to be used in the event of M^r Clark’s not consenting to go with me but as he had I could not use it without the previous consent of the President; however if he thought proper to go on with me to the Illinois where I expected to winter I could obtain an answer from the President by the spring of the year or before the Missourie would be sufficiently open to admit of my ascending it; and that in the event of the President’s not consenting to our wishes, I conceived that the situation of that country was a much more elligible one for a phisician than that of Wheeling particularly as he stated the practice which he had acquired at Wheeling was not an object; the D^r was to have taken his medicine with him which was a small assortment of about 100 £ value. remained here all night— The people began to top ther corn and collect ther fodder—

Source: Lewis’s 1803 journal, printed in Quaife, The Journals of Captain Meriwether Lewis and Sergeant John Ordway (Wisconsin Historical Society, 1916), pp. 39-40. Public domain.