Explorer Meriwether Lewis Commitment To Preparation Paved The Way To A Successful Expedition.(A)

Byline: Kerry Jackson

Long before he would lead a famous expedition across thecontinent, Meriwether Lewis was preparing himself for the demands that are required of an explorer.

"When he was 8 years old," wrote Thomas Jefferson, a family friend who, as president, sent Lewis and William Clark into the American frontier in the early19th century, "he habitually went out in the dead of night alone with his dogs, into the forest to hunt raccoon and opossum. . . . In this exercise, no season or circumstance could obstruct his purpose, plunging (through) the winter's snow and frozen streams in pursuit of his object."

Born in Virginia in 1774, Lewis lived in Georgia when he was young, with other transplanted Virginians who were starting a colony.

He became at home in the wilderness. He fished, hunted and helped the settlers make and break camp. It was life on the frontier, and Lewis picked up the "hardy habits and a firm constitution," a family friend once said, that he would need later in life. "He possessed in the highest degree self-possession in danger."

In one of those dangerous moments, the colonists fled into the woods during an Indian attack. One of the settlers, cold and hungry, started a fire to cook a meal. The Indians lurked nearby. Lewis, showing the composure he would need to make the arduous trek to the Pacific Ocean two decades later, took charge.

"The fire attracted the Indians," Stephen Ambrose wrote in "Undaunted Courage." Eventually, "something close to panic set in. In the general confusion and uproar, only 10-year-old Meriwether had sufficient presence of mind to throw a bucket of water over the fire to douse it, to prevent the Indians from seeing the whites silhouetted against the light of the fire."