tucky by the inroads of civilization, was hunting and trapping along the Missouri; Philip Nolan was corralling wild horses on the plains threaded by the Brazos River: but as yet the land was not coveted for its own sake. The region west of the Mississippi was important to the frontier settlers mainly because a strong power once established there might dominate the traffic down the river. When Spain ceded the Louisiana Territory to Napoleon, and that ambitious potentate began to project a colonial empire in this realm discovered by La Salle, the Western states and, by consequence, the United States authorities became concerned for the future of Louisiana. A French commandant at New Orleans might withhold the much-contested right of deposit and strangle the trade so essential to the prosperity of the West. Fortunately for the peace of the frontiers, Napoleon had the sense to see that to maintain his rule at New Orleans would cost more men and money than France could well spare. On renewal of the war with England (1803) he was easily induced to cede the whole territory to the United States for $15,000,000.

sug

Winsor,

Narr. and

Crit. Hist. of
America,

VII, 556.

Ch. V.

Laut,

No man in that day knew the extent and resources of the region thus suddenly acquired. One Captain Robert Gray of Boston, during a voyage round the world (1792), had come upon the mouth of the great river he named after his good ship Columbia. The furthermost bound of the continent had already been determined by the English explorer, Vancouver, but what lay between the Missouri and the Marvin, Pacific coast was still to be discovered. At the wise gestion of President Jefferson an exploring party was sent up the Missouri River to penetrate to its source and be- Pathfinders yond the divide, to the rivers that flow into the Pacific. Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis on their arduous Thwaites, journey in May, 1804. They wintered at Mandan, building a log fort, over which they flew the American flag. The following spring they pushed on up the river to the Great Falls and beyond to the mountain barrier Semple, that divides the continent. There they cached their Ch. XI. boats and followed the Indian trails leading over the

of the West.

Rocky Mt. Exploration, 62-209.

Gass,

Lewis and
Clark
Journal.

Irving,
Astoria.

Lolo Pass to the western slope of the Rockies. It was a task of enormous difficulty, but pluck and endurance brought the party at last to the Clearwater River. There they took boats once more and soon reached the Columbia and the shore of the vast sea into which it flows. An English vessel commanded by Broughton, one of Vancouver's officers, had already ascended the Columbia as far as the Cascades and taken possession of the territory in the name of Great Britain. The rival claims thus established remained unsettled for forty years.

In the same year an exploring party, commanded by Z. M. Pike, an army officer, but acting under private auspices, ascended the Mississippi to Leech Lake and unfurled the Stars and Stripes over the British trading posts. In 1805 he struck directly west from St. Louis over the plains to the Arkansas River and reached the Rockies at Pikes Peak. Thence the indomitable explorer conducted his party across the range to the sources of the Rio Grande and the Spanish capital of Santa Fé. Thus were the confines of the newly acquired territory determined.

Pike and Lewis and Clark were instructed to make careful observations of the region traversed. Their journals contain frequent notes on the fauna and flora seen along the route, and they endeavored to ascertain something of the industrial resources of the country. Its vast wealth, mineral and agricultural, and the commercial opportunities of the Pacific coast remained to be developed by a later generation. The only riches immediately available were furs and the profits of Indian trade. John Jacob Astor, a New York merchant who had accumulated a fortune by selling American furs in China, undertook to exploit the fur trade of the Louisiana Territory. He projected a series of trading posts along the Great Lakes and the Missouri and Columbia rivers, and proposed to send his furs to the Orient by way of the Pacific. A land expedition was sent along the Lewis and Clark route, but supplies were forwarded by sea round Cape Horn. After many and costly vicissitudes the two parties met at the

mouth of the Columbia River and there built a fortified trading post, Astoria. The British trading monopoly, the Northwest Company, contested the right of Americans to operate in this region, and induced Astor's agents to abandon the enterprise. A man-of-war flying the Union Jack came to the aid of the rival company and Astoria became Fort George.

CHAPTER VI

INDUSTRIAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE WAR OF 1812

Vindication of the Rights of Neutral Trade

VI, 31-57,

American Grievances. — Jay's treaty had settled none of McMaster, the weighty commercial questions at issue between Eng- III, 240-335. land and the United States. Another treaty, negotiated Hildreth, in 1807, was rejected by the Senate as unsatisfactory. 84-136, 187It did not provide for the inviolability of neutral trade, 206, 300–310. nor did it guarantee American sailors against being im- Annals of pressed into British service. English statesmen main- Congress, 1814-1815, tained that the rights and obligations of a British subject 1417-1452. were unalienable and that a man born in the British Isles was liable to impressment though he might have naturalized as an American citizen. In pursuance of this policy, British men-of-war were accustomed to cruise outside our harbors, there to overhaul merchantmen as they set sail, inspect the crew, and claim the sailors who could not prove American birth. In the case of the Chesapeake, a cruiser of the United States was forcibly searched, and four men three Americans and one Briton - were carried off in irons. Not less than six thousand American sailors were thus impressed into the royal navy, and England, hard bestead to make good the losses of war, was loath to abandon the practice. Three times the right of impressment had been formally protested by the United States government but without avail. The Foreign Office retorted that thousands of British sailors had deserted from his Majesty's ships and taken service on American vessels, where higher wages and more humane treatment might be expected.

Annals of Congress, 1814-1815,

1451.