… was born on this date in 1774. Lewis had this to say on his 31st birthday 200 years ago today, camped just east of Lemhi Pass near the present-day Montana-Idaho border. (From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition Online at the University of Nebraska.)
This day I completed my thirty first year, and conceived that I had in all human probability now existed about half the period which I am to remain in this Sublunary world. I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they been judiciously expended. but since they are past and cannot be recalled, I dash from me the gloomy thought and resolved in future, to redouble my exertions and at least indeavour to promote those two primary objects of human existence, by giving them the aid of that portion of talents which nature and fortune have bestoed on me; or in future, to live for mankind, as I have heretofore lived for myself.—
His birthday doubts are made all the more poignant, of course, with the knowledge that just more than four years later Lewis took his own life at age 35.
(This entry was originally posted a year ago.)