374 



Morse estimates this area much too high at 860,000 square 

 miles. The territory of the Arkansas only, of a great part 

 of which Major Long has taken very exact surveys, is 

 125,855 square miles. 1 found the state of Louisiana on 

 the east of the Mississipi, 6200 square miles, and on the 

 west 45,300. 



^ Between the Rocky Mountains and the coast of the Pacific 

 Ocean : 288,400 square miles, or 24,091 square marine 

 leagues. This is the territory of Columbia, of Oregon or 

 the west, which must not be confounded either with the 

 territory of the north-west, between lake Superiour and 

 lake Michigan, now comprehended in the territory of 

 Michigan, nor with the English western territory, which 

 the members of the North West Company pass over. 1 

 have found on different maps, for this fourth great division 

 of the United States, 286,034 ; 288,391 ; 284,925 j and 

 290,400 square English miles. The territory of Oregon 

 (Columbia), Arkansas, and Missouri, comprehending the 

 state of this latter name, furnishes, according to my cal- 

 culation, an area of 1,107,000 square miles, an immense 

 region, which in 1820 did not contain 83,000 inhabitants 

 of European origin. 



The United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, 

 now comprehend an area of 174,306 square leagues, 20 to 

 a degree, or 2,086,800 square miles. Mr. Morse computes 

 the area at 2 millions of square miles, the half of which be- 

 longs to the territory of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oregon. 

 M. Warden, in the French and English editions of his statis- 

 tical work (Introd. Vol. i, p. xlix and li,) had estimated that 

 surface at more than 1,836,000 square miles; and if he seems 

 at a later period in the French edition (Vol. v, p. 100, and 

 Bulletin de la Society de Gtfographie, vol. i, n° 3), to fix on 

 1,637,000, that diminution of surface arises only from an er- 

 ror caused by the reduction of leagues into square miles. The 



