As he waits in Pittsburgh for the military barge to be completed, Lewis leaves little record of his day-to-day activities. Likely he enjoyed the coarse maple sugar made in the surrounding hills during the winters.
Gathering Sap
Postcard by Detroit Publishing Co. Image is in the Public Domain.
Original title: Gathering sap at Maple Sugar Camp, Vermont.
Coarse Maple Sugar
Like his men would do the following winter, sugar is made from maple sap in Pittsburgh as described below by another traveler.
The sugar-maple is very common in every part of Pennsylvania which the Monongahela and Alleghany water. This tree thrives most in cold, wet, and mountainous countries, and its seed is always more abundant when the winter is most severe. The sugar extracted from it is generally very coarse, and is sold, after having been prepared in loaves of six, eight, and ten pounds each, at the rate of seven-pence per pound. The inhabitants manufacture none but for their own use; the greater part of them drink tea and coffee daily, but they use it just as it has passed the first evaporation, and never take the trouble to refine it, on account of the great waste occasioned by the operation.
—François André Michaux[1]François André Michaux, Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains (1805 reprint from London edition), p. 67 in Reuben G. Thwaites, Travels West of the Alleghanies (Cleveland: The Arthur H. … Continue reading
Notes
| ↑1 | François André Michaux, Travels to the West of the Alleghany Mountains (1805 reprint from London edition), p. 67 in Reuben G. Thwaites, Travels West of the Alleghanies (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1904), p. 163. |
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- The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Day by Day by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2018). The story in prose, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals: An American Epic of Discovery (abridged) by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Selected journal excerpts, 14 May 1804–23 September 1806.
- The Lewis and Clark Journals. by Gary E. Moulton (University of Nebraska Press, 1983–2001). The complete story in 13 volumes.
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Unless otherwise noted, journal excerpts are from The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, edited by Gary E. Moulton, 13 vols. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983-2001).