“Ibn Battutu: one of the world’s most renowned travellers and authors of travel books. Between 1325 and 1353, his journeys brought him from his native Tangiers to Egypt, Syria, Mecca, Iraq, the Red Sea, and Yemen, Oman, Istanbul, Transoxiana, Afghanistan, the Indus, the Maldives, Ceylon, Bengal, Sumatra and the Chinese port of Zaytun, Sardinia, Granada, and across the Sahara to the country of the Niger.”
-from Islamic Desk Reference
“My departure from Tangier, my birthplace, took place on Thursday the second of the month of God, Rajab the Unique, in the year seven hundred twenty five (hijri calendar) with the object of making the Pilgrimage to the Holy House and of visiting the tomb of the Prophet, God’s richest blessing and peace by on him. I set out alone, having neither fellow traveller in whose companionship I might find cheer nor caravan whose party I might join, but swayed by an overmastering impulse within me and a desire long cherished in my bosom…so I braced my resolution to quit all my dear ones, male and female, and forsook my home as birds forsake their nests.”
-from Chapter One, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, translated by H.A.R. Gibb
“Set out from Camp River at Dubois at 4 O'Clock PM and proceded up the Missouris under sail to the first island in the Missouri and Camped on the upper point opposit a Creek on the South Side below a ledge of limestone rock called Colewater…A cloudy rainey day. wind from the N.E. men in high Spirits.”
-Journals of Lewis and Clark, May 14 1804, the day the expedition set out from its winter camp on the east bank of the Mississippi near St.Louis to ascend the Missouri River
“Colewater” (forgive William Clark’s atrocious spelling) ledge marks where Coldwater Creek enters the Missouri River. The creek, in whose headwaters I often played when young, was later contaminated by uranium stored there and leaked into its waters during WW2 by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works under contract to the DOD for the Manhattan Project.
“A fair morning, passed the Coal Hill (call by the natives Carbonear [Charbonnier])…Arrived opposit St Charles…it contains 100 indefferent houses and abot 450 Inhabetents principally frinch, those people appear pore and extreemly kind, the Countrey around I am told is butifull.”
-from the Journals, May 15 1804
Charbonnier Road running down the bluff to the Missouri River today in the town of Florissant is pronounced-Charbonear- as the journal almost had it.
“a Sergeant and four men of the Party will convene and form themselves into a Court martial to hear and determine the evidences aduced against William Warner for being absent last night without leave, contrary to orders..for behaveing in an unbecomieing manner at the Ball last night…for Speaking in a language last night after his return tending to bring into disrespect of the order of the Commanding officer.”
-from the Journals, May 17, 1804
On May 17, the day after the expedition reached St.Charles, a town visible from my family house especially when the parking lot’s sodium lamps at the landlocked Riverboat casinos light up the night sky, William Werner (his name often misspelled as Warner in the journals) was court martialed for staying out late at the cotillion ball that the “frinch” laid on for the expedition the night before. Werner was sentenced to 25 lashes “on his naked back”, a punishment which was suspended. He later was appointed an expedition cook and little heard from him again in the journals. On March 17 1805 it was reported that he has “lost his Tommahawk”. A Montana creek was named for him but later renamed Duck Creek. In his book about the fate of the expedition’s members in later years, historian Larry Morris writes that Werner “may have lived the most stable life of any member of the corps” back home in Virginia.