98 Trans. Acad. Sci. of St. Louis. 
flies he noted and the characteristic fossil crinoids of 
this region. He described carefully the mounds in St. 
Louis and crossed the river to visit those in Illinois, par- 
ticularly Cahokia Mound. 
Instead of joining one of the annual fur trading cara- 
vans of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, as he had 
planned, Maximilian, on the advice of General Clark, 
took the American Fur Company’s annual steamboat to 
their trading posts on the Missouri. At Fort Clark, the 
company’s Mandan post, the German visitor attended 
various ceremonies, dances and feasts, took portraits of 
the chiefs, and studied the manners and customs, and 
myths and superstitions of this vanishing race. 
About 1830 St. Louis began to feel the effects of the 
Oregon immigration movement, and among the earliest 
leaders was Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth,'* who conducted 
two expeditions to the Far West. His project was to 
organize a trading company to do business in the valley 
of the Columbia river and its tributaries, his plan being 
to furnish supplies to his colonists and ship his products 
by ocean vessels sailing to and from the Columbia. He 
believed that by this method he could reach the country 
beyond the mountains far more cheaply than by way of 
St. Louis. 
On his second expedition Wyeth was accompanied by 
two scientists—Thomas Nuttall and John K. Townsend,?* 
*6 The correspondence and journals of Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, 
1831-6. Sources of the History of Oregon. 1. 1899. 
Young, F. C. The Oregon trail. Oregon Hist. Soc. Quart. 1: 339- 
370. 1900. 
Drake, S. A. Nathaniel J. Wyeth. Oregon Hist. Soc. Quart. 1: 
66-70. 1900. 
Chittenden, H. M. The American fur trade in the far west. 1: 434 
456. 1902. 
Thwaites, R.G. Wyeth’s Oregon, or, A short history of a long jour- 
ney. Early Western Travels 1748-1846. 21: 1904. 
17 Thwaites, R. G. Narrative of a journey across the Rocky moun- 
tains to the Columbia river, and a visit to the Sandwich Islands, Chili, 
etc., with a scientific appendix. 1839. Early Western Travels 1748- 
1846. 21. 1904, 
