102 SANDFORD FLEMING ON 



Mountains and from Hudson Bay to Peace River ; they liad extended their explorations 

 from Lake Superior to the Arctic Ocean, at a time when the whole region from the 

 Missouri to the Pacific had been untrodden by white men. 



Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clarke, with a strong and well equipped expedition, left 

 the Atlantic coast in June 1803, and reached the mouth of the Columbia in December, 1805. 

 Returning, the expedition arrived at Washington in February, 1807. Their oiEcial journal 

 was not published until 1814. Notes were however given to the public in 1808. 



With the exception of a private expedition, sent from New York three years after 

 the return of Lewis and Clarke, the moving spirit of which was John Jacob Astor, and 

 which ended in failure, there was no intercourse between the United States and the 

 Pacific coast by land until the second quarter of the present century. 



After the failure of Astor's Company, the first successful attempt in the United States 

 to form a connection with the west was in 1825, when Jedediah Smith led a party across 

 Utah and Nevada to California. The second was in 1832, when Nathaniel J. Wyeth and 

 some twenty others proceeded overland from Massachusets to Oregon. These were the 

 pioneer waves of the tide of immigration which followed in after years. 



(4) Explorations under the great Fur Companies. 



The agents and officers of the Canadian fur companies penetrated the country 

 beyond the Rocky Mountains in all directions. They established trading posts throughout 

 New Caledonia, now British Columbia, (1) in 1805 on McLeod Lake, (2) in 1806 on Stuart 

 Lake, (3) in 1801 on the Jackanut (now the Fraser) at Fort George, and in 1808, an expe- 

 dition started from the latter point to trace the Jackanut to the sea. They discovered 

 Thompson River in 1808 ; they traversed the river Columbia from its extreme northern 

 bend at Boat Encampment to its mouth in 1811 ; and their agents were the first Europeans 

 to exercise control in the extensive region now known as Oregon, Washington Territory, 

 and British Columbia. Throughout that vast region early in the century, the Canadian 

 fur companies founded many trading establishments, and gained a dominant influence 

 amongst the native tribes. 



Early in the ceatury the several fur companies were reduced to two, the "North- 

 West " and the " Hudson's Bay." In 1821, the rivals became consolidated to form a single 

 organization, henceforth to be known by the name of the " Hudson's Bay Company." 

 The authority of this company was now undisputed, and its influence was supreme, 

 as well throughout the region bounded on the west by the Pacific coast, as to the east 

 of the mountains. In 1839, the company entered into an arrangement with Russia 

 for the lease of Alaska ; and its trading posts were established at all eligible points from 

 Behring Strait on the north, to San Francisco to the south. For the time being, the 

 northern Pacific coast was virtually in possession of the Hudson's Bay Company. 



lu this condition of affairs the river Columbia proved of paramount importance as the 

 means of intercourse between east and west. For half a century after David Thompson's 

 first descent in 1811, it became the great highway between Canada and the Pacific. 

 There was no natural line of communication more accessible or more available ; and at 

 the date when the Oregon Treaty went into force, few travellers attempted to enter 



