officers, Creole gentlemen, an English Canadian trader or two. With my
elbow on the sill of the open window I watched them awhile, listening
with a boy's eagerness to what they had to say of the day's doings. They
disputed amongst themselves in various degrees of English as to the
manner of treating the red man,--now gesticulating, now threatening, now
seizing a rolled parchment treaty from the table. Clark sat alone, a
little apart, silent save a word now and then in a low tone to Monsieur
Gratiot or Captain Bowman. Here was an odd assortment of the races which
had overrun the new world. At intervals some disputant would pause in
his talk to kill a mosquito or fight away a moth or a June-bug, but
presently the argument reached such a pitch that the mosquitoes fed
undisturbed.

"You have done much, sir," said the Spanish commandant of St. Louis, "but
the savage, he will never be content without present. He will never be
won without present."

Clark was one of those men who are perforce listened to when they begin
to speak.

"Captain de Leyba," said he, "I know not what may be the present policy
of his Spanish Majesty with McGillivray and his Creeks in the south, but
this I do believe," and he brought down his fist among the papers, "that
the old French and Spanish treaties were right in principle. Here are
copies of the English treaties that I have secured, and in them thousands
of sovereigns have been thrown away. They are so much waste paper.
Gentlemen, the Indians are children. If you give them presents, they
believe you to be afraid of them. I will deal with them without
presents; and if I had the gold of the Bank of England stored in the
garrison there, they should not touch a piece of it."