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After I had looked over the field and inspected the Journal's books I was satisfied that a union with the Courier was the wisest solution of the newspaper situation, and told them so. Meanwhile Mr. Haldeman, whom I had known in the Confederacy, sent for me. He offered me the same terms for part ownership and sole editorship of the Courier, which the Journal people had offered me.
If my special "editor's" duties were thus light, I made up, however, for their deficiency, by enlarging upon the skeleton telegrams that came every night across the ocean "expanding news," so to speak and by also writing, on the arrival of every steamer, while seated in the back parlour of the journal's office in New York, the most graphic special correspondent's letters from Paris and London!
The patience of the explorers was rewarded, on Sunday, May 26, 1806, by their first view of the Rocky Mountains. Here is the journal's record on that date: On both sides of the river, and at no great distance from it, the mountains followed its course. Above these at the distance of fifty miles from us, an irregular range of mountains spread from west to northwest from his position.
And I must confess that I had treated the idea very cavalierly and academically as a dream and nothing more. Time and the world had rolled on, Gompers was gone, the American Federation of Labour was gone, and gone was Debs with all his wild revolutionary ideas; but the dream had persisted, and here it was at last realized in fact. But I laughed, as I read, at the journal's gloomy outlook.
First I thought I'd copy France out of the guide-book, like old Badger in the for'rard cabin, who's writing a book, but there's more than three hundred pages of it. Oh, I don't think a journal's any use do you? They're only a bother, ain't they?" "Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn't of much use, but a journal properly kept is worth a thousand dollars when you've got it done."
Nine men gathered about the table which replaced Tom's work-a-day old desk: the two Chenoweths, Eugene Madrillon, Marsh, Jefferson Bareaud, the stout General, Tom Vanrevel, Crailey, and Will Cummings, the editor coming in a little late, but rubbing his hands cheerfully over what he declared was to be the last column from his pen to rear its length on the Journal's front page for many a long day a description of the presentation of the flag, a bit of prose which he considered almost equal to his report of the warehouse fire.
On the seventh of July, the little company went through the famous pass of the Rocky Mountains, now properly named for the leaders of the expedition. Here is the journal's account of their finding the Lewis and Clark Pass:
Yet back of all the noise and human energy, as a newspaperman, I could think only of the silent, systematic gathering and editing of the news, of the busy scenes that each journal's office presented, the haste, the excitement, the thrill in the very smell of the printer's ink. Miss Ashton, I was glad to note, as we proceeded downtown, fell more and more into the spirit of the adventure.
In other cases the critic is obliged to support his journal's repute for severity, or for wit, or for morality, though he may himself be entirely amiable, dull, and wicked; this necessity more or less warps his verdicts. The worst is that he is personal, perhaps because it is so easy and so natural to be personal, and so instantly attractive.
There is no danger in the trip except the problem of getting there and getting away again, and that is now removed by The Journal's yacht. I would have gone earlier had any of the periodicals that asked me to go shown me any way to get there THERE IS NO FEVER THIS TIME OF YEAR and as you know fever never touches me. It got all the others in Central America and never worried me at all.
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