Lewis and Clark
Said, "Come on, let's embark
For a boating trip up the Missouri!
It's the President's wish
And we might catch some fish,
Though the river is muddy as fury."
So they started away
On a breezy May day,
Full of courage and lore scientific,
And, before they came back,
They had blazed out a track
From St. Louis straight to the Pacific.
Now, if you want to go
From St. Louis (in Mo.)
To Portland (the Ore. not the Me. one),
You can fly there in planes
Or board limited trains
Or the family car, if there be one.
It only take you two weeks,
If your car's full of squeaks
And you stop for the sights and the
strangers,
But it took them (don't laugh!)
Just one year and a half,
Full of buffalo, Indians and dangers.
They ate prairie-dog soup
When they suffered from croup
for the weather was often quite drizzly.
They learned "How do you do"
In Shoshone and Sioux,
And how to be chased by a grizzly.
They crossed mountain and river
With never a quiver,
And the Rockies themselves weren't too big
for them,
For they scrambled across
With their teeth full of moss,
But their fiddler still playing a jig for
them.
Missouri's Great Falls,
And the Yellowstone's walls
And the mighty Columbia's billows,
They viewed or traversed,
Of all white men the first
To make the whole Northwest their pillows.
And, when they returned,
It was glory well-earned
That they gave to the national chorus.
They were ragged and lean
But they'd seen what they'd seen,
And it spread out an Empire before us.
