The real joy of the Lewis & Clark journals consists in their presentation of early 19th Century American idiom and spelling. This edition modernizes spelling, grammar and sentence structure. Clark , for example, never spelled Sioux the same way twice. Mosquitos often was spelled as mosquitors. I deeply missed the charming character of William Clark's English. Its absence is palpable in the text. Meriwether Lewis, on the other hand, was an elegant stylist whose prose needs no modernization. On balance, a disappointment that robs the true wealth of the Lewis & Clark Journals