““We were now about to penetrate a country at least two thousand miles in width, on which the foot of civilized man had never trod. The good or evil it had in store for us was for experiment yet to determine, and these little vessels contained every article by which we were to expect to subsist or defend ourselves. However, as the state of mind in which we are, generally gives the coloring to events, when the imagination is suffered to wander into futurity, the picture which now presented itself to me was a most pleasing one. Entertaining as I do the most confident hope of succeeding in a voyage which had formed a darling project of mine for the last ten years, I could but esteem this moment of my departure as among the most happy of my life. (Meriwether Lewis)””
![“The culmination of Sehnsucht [Longing, Joy] in the rhapsodic joy of heaven is, for me at least, the strongest single element in Lewis. In one way or other it hovers over nearly every one of his books and suggests to me that Lewis’s apocalyptic vision is perhaps more real than that of anyone since…” quote by Clyde S. Kilby](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b99/clyde-s-kilby-72203_quote_the-culmination-of-sehnsucht-longing-joy_1727272.jpg)
