The Nome daily nugget., 1935-02-02

and announced the successful completion or their great journey the honors which the future held for him. He returned to Washing ton to find himself the hero of the hour and to be warmly welcomed by Jefferson who said: He is now become close to me as an own son" = The first honor which came to him was the governorship of the vast territory which he had explored Tn 1907 he left Washington for St. Louis to take over his new job. It was not an easy one. There were conflicting land grants to be passed upon, there was jealousy and pickering among the ofice-holders and all sorts of Quarrels and differences among the varied population of the new country to be settled. Within year Meriwether Lewis was sick and weary man. He became more lonely and silent. even towards his good friend, William Clark. The old breeding fits of black despair settled down upon him once more.
 Then came another blow to his troubled spirit. Petty officials in Washington questioned some of his accounts and refused to pay them. Cut to the quick by this insinuation against his integ- rity, he prepared to go to the Capital to defend himself against his detractors. By this time he was a very sick man indeed. Clark and his other friends tried to dissuade him from at tempting the Journey but without success
 Accompanied by two servants, Pernea Gre ole. and Jim, a negro, and by Maj John Nicely, Indian agent for the Cherokees, he set out on horseback. In Tennessee his illness became worse but he insisted upon pushing on. Then one afternoon he and his companions became separated in severe rainstorm. Lewis sought shelter in a wayside tavern, kept by a Mrs. Griner What happened then Is told in the words of Jefferson, writing in 1872, as follows: Mrs. Griner alarmed at the symptoms of Arrangement she discovered, gave him up the house and re- tired to rest herself in an outhouse, the gov ernor's and Neely's servants lodging in another. About three o'clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction and de- prived his country of one of her most valued citizens, whose valor and intelligence would now have been employed in averaging the wrongs of his country, and in emulating by land the splendid deeds which have honored her arms on the ocean To this melancholy close of the life of one whom posterity will declare not to have lived in vain have only to add that all the facts I have stated are known either to | myself, or communicated by his family to others for whose truth I have no hesitation to make myself responsible
 There has been some dispute among histo- | rians over the facts of Lewis death One yer sion of the tale has 1t that he was murdered either by Griner, Pernea the Creole, or Jim the negro But his biographer declares: "The weight l of testimony, both recorded and traditional, is overwhelming in support of the but slightly varying accounts forwarded by John Nicely Alexander Wilson and Thomas Jefferson,' which means Meriwether Lewis died by his own hand | He was buried near the place where he died, 72 miles west of Nashville on the old Natchez Trace. Tn 1849 the legislature of Tennessee voted the sum of $500 to build monument over his grave and in 1925 the federal government set aside a tract of 50 acres surrounding this memorial as a national monument. splendid memorial to him and his friend, William Clark, stands on the campus of the University of vir- ginia at Charlottesville and recent years have also seen statues of both men erected near the Missouri state capitol at Jefferson City. Numer- ous tablets and other memorials dot their trail | from the Mississippi to the Pacific and tall obelisk which stands near the town that bears | his name, Meriwether, Mont, is known as the Lewis monument" commemorating the most northerly point reached by the expedition But even without all these memorials the fame of Meriwether Lewis and his friend. William Clark. I would be secure Lewis and Clark is . famil. far phrase on the American tongue and in the American mind 1t is a perpetual symbol of thoss who go forth to adventure, clad in the shining armor of youth and high enterprise.
 Oby Wsstsrn Nswspapsr unioA.