My Dearest Julia,
I promised I would write to you and tell you of these, my adventures, in hopes that they might amuse you, or at least give you some idea of the momentous enterprise in which I’m involved.
Until recently, I believed I was settled in my ways and had quite abandoned the adventurous life, as I told your esteemed parents when I asked for permission to court you with an eye toward making you my wife. But a month ago, I received a letter from my old friend Meriwether Lewis, whom I’m sure I have mentioned in conversation before. My friend happened to be in St. Louis when the great wizard Benjamin Franklin visited, when the unexpected dragon attacked and set fire to parts of the city. The commotion was reported in many newspapers throughout the land, and the eyewitness reports are quite indisputable.
After my friend Meriwether assisted the old wizard during this battle against the remarkable creature from myth, Franklin was so impressed that he hired Meriwether to lead a bold expedition into the uncharted arcane territories west of St. Louis, perhaps even to find a path all the way to the Pacific Ocean, if it still exists after the Sundering.
Meriwether invited me to accompany him as his partner on the expedition. He wrote me a letter filled with perfectly sensible points and making a strong case to go out there. This, Franklin insisted, was a possible means—via the western sea—to sail back to Europe, and it was also an unparalleled chance for civilized men to study the native fauna and flora, to learn about the rest of our land, in which we now find ourselves stranded.
Those reasons alone should be sufficient, but then, other things transpired, related to the dragon attack and other similarly profound events occurring near St. Louis.
It seems that someone or some arcane force fueled by magic is uniting the native tribes west of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, making them hostile to Europeans. Franklin doesn’t know if it is an evil person, creature, or force, but that will be part of our duty to investigate.
I apologize for not writing you sooner, but I have been overwhelmed with purchasing and organizing supplies for such an enormous undertaking, funded by Franklin himself. I am due to meet Meriwether in St. Louis in another month.
I know you will chide me for risking myself on this mad enterprise before our wedding, but I promise to do my best to return to you and keep our engagement. Though we encounter perils and adventures, I will be back to claim your hand, my dearest.
I will send letters when I can if we send couriers back east, for I know your curious mind will wish to know of all the new things we find and the dangers we vanquish.
Yours in fond regard,
William Clark
—Letter from William Clark to Julia Hancock,
April 28, 1804