Undaunted Courage Excerpts

From p. 109, explaining Lewis' writing style:

Geographer Paul Russell Cutright speaks of “Lewis’s recurrent artistry in stringing apt words together colorfully,” and notes that among his virtues as a writer were “his sizeable working vocabulary, his quietly authoritative statements, his active unrestrained interest in all natural phenomena, his consistent adherence to truth and above all, his wide command of adjectives, verbs and nouns which repeatedly give color to his sentences.”

 

P.149, journal excerpt

“So magnificent scenery in a country thus situated far removed from the civilized world to be enjoyed by nothing but the buffalo elk deer and bear in which it abounds and savage Indians.”   Possibly the captains puzzled over why God had created such a place and failed to put Virginians in it, or put it in Virginia.

 

P. 239, because such things are amusing

“I amused myself in fishing, and sleeping away the fortiegues of yesterday.”

P 246, Flow Theory, in my opinion

“The men all appear perfectly to have made up their minds to succeed in the expedition or purish in the attepmpt.   We all believe that we are now about to enter on the most perilous and difficult part of our voyage, yet I see no one repining; all appear ready to met those difficultie which wait us with resolution and becoming fortitude.”

P. 260, How Sacagawea reminds me of my Mom

About Sacagawea: “I cannot discover that she shows any immotion of sorrow in recollecting this event, or joy in again being restored to  native country; if she has enough to eat and a few trinkets to wear I believe she would be perfectly content anywhere.”

P. 266, working towards success

“Thus far I have accomplished one of those great objects on which my mind has been unalterably fixed for many years, judge then of the pleasure I felt in allying my thirst with this pure and ice coldwater.”

 

P. 458, connection to my husband to be and his friends, the aging bachelors

“I am now a perfect widower with respect to love… I feel all the restlessness, that inquietude, that certain indescribable something common to old bachelors, which I cannot avoid thinking my dear fellow, proceeds from that void in our hearts, which might, or ought to be better filled.  Whence it comes I know not,but certain it is, that I never felt less like a heroe than at the present moment.  What may be my next adventure god knows, but on this, I am determined to get a wife.”