Book Review: UNDAUNTED COURAGE - the case of Meriwether Lewis

William Ahrendt's Meriwether Lewis, First View of the RockiesFound in http://www.williamahrendt.com/portfolio.php

I just finished an interesting read about one of our nation's least known heros, Meriwether Lewis. The book is entitled with Thomas Jefferson's unforgettable eulogy about the explorer extraordinaire. If you think a camping trip in a state park can be rustic think about crossing North America (literally coast-to-coast) and coming back! 

But one question - Why did he end up Commiting Suicide?

If a man was capable of crossing our nation - without the help of any locomotive - and come back! why wasn't he capable of the life-after-voyage?

My two-cent perspective goes like this: 

You can't live your Life Journey thinking that Journey's End, Your Life's Purpose, is HERE on Earth. We can only pray: "Thy Will be Done...On Earth as it is in Heaven...only in heaven do we have our answer. 

Heaven is our Journey's End

and Nothing on Earth can take its place.

Stephen Ambrose, authored the book in 1996. There is no doubt that it can be considered one of his best works. To think of what virgin America would have looked like. The descriptions of Lewis and Clarks' crossing of the Rockies, their hunting expeditions, etc. If you like adventure - this book is for you (or would make a good Christmas present)

Ambrose boasts a precise account having utilized all the available resources. It is as several of his other pieces have been, a dry read. I have noted this in other works of his but in this case I think it would follow Lewis' portrayal of events since - as amply quoted in Amrose's book - Lewis also writes in a very dry. The descriptions despite their accuracy can at times be, again, dry.

Meriwether Lewis
William Peale
http://commons.wikimedia.org

I finish off with Jefferson's unforgettable eulogy. One long - Presidentially Long - Run-on sentence:

“Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order and discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs, and principles; habituated to the hunting life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country against losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves – with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him. To fill up the measure desired, he wanted nothing but a greater familiarity with the technical language of the natural sciences, and readiness in the astronomical observations necessary for the geography of his route. To acquire these he repaired immediately to Philadelphia, and placed himself under the tutorage of the distinguished professors of that place.” 

(Thomas Jefferson)