A considerable time intervened before the governor's arrival at St.
Louis. He found the territory distracted by feuds and contentions among
the officers of the government, and the people themselves divided by
these into factions and parties. He determined at once to take no side
with either; but to use every endeavour to conciliate and harmonize
them. The even-handed justice he administered to all soon established a
respect for his person and authority; and perseverance and time wore
down animosities, and reunited the citizens again into one family.

Governor Lewis had, from early life, been subject to hypochondriac
affections. It was a constitutional disposition in all the nearer
branches of the family of his name, and was more immediately inherited
by him from his father. They had not, however, been so strong as to give
uneasiness to his family. While he lived with me in Washington I
observed at times sensible depressions of mind: but knowing their
constitutional source, I estimated their course by what I had seen in
the family. During his western expedition, the constant exertion which
that required of all the faculties of body and mind, suspended these
distressing affections; but after his establishment at St. Louis in
sedentary occupations, they returned upon him with redoubled vigour, and
began seriously to alarm his friends. He was in a paroxysm of one of
these, when his affairs rendered it necessary for him to go to
Washington. He proceeded to the Chickasaw Bluffs, where he arrived on
the sixteenth of September, 1809, with a view of continuing his journey
thence by water. Mr. Neely, agent of the United States with the
Chickasaw Indians, arriving there two days after, found him extremely
indisposed, and betraying at times some symptoms of a derangement of
mind. The rumours of a war with England, and apprehensions that he might
lose the papers he was bringing on, among which were the vouchers of his
public accounts, and the journals and papers of his western expedition,