der the Hudson's Bay Company ownership, and from which point all the travel, messengers and officers as well as employes of the Hudson's Bay Company, came over the mountains on their way to Vancouver on the Columbia. Ebberts was an American independent trapper, and Otchin, Baldra, and all the old Hudson's Bay men of Washington county, Oregon, were perfectly familiar with that route and could give many interesting tales of its surprises and dangers.

Here Mackenzie put in the winter of 1792-3, and by spring had all things in readiness for the final advance to the Pacific. With one canoe, twenty-five feet long, four and three-quarters feet beam, and twenty-six inches hold, seven white men and two Indian hunters and interpreters with arms, ammunition, provisions and goods for presents weighing in all about three thousand pounds, these explorers started for the Pacific ocean on mountain streams. The canoe was so perfectly made, and so light that two men could carry it over portages for miles at a time without stopping to rest. Where is the white man boat builder that could equal that canoe carved out of a great cedar tree by the untutored red men?

On the 9th of May, 1793, the little party left Fort York, pointed their little vessel up stream and was off for the great Pacific. Before them everything was in its native wildness; unpolluted streams, untouched forests, and verdant prairies covered with buffalo, elk, deer and antelope. Nothing could have been more exciting or entrancing to these lovers of the woods and waters of our primeval forests. With paddle and pole they propelled their craft up the swift flowing mountain stream day by day against every manner of obstruction and difficulties. Rocks beset their way on every side, beavers dammed the streams, perpendicular cliffs and impassable cataracts compelled them to take boat, provisions and everything from the stream and carry all around obstructions for miles, to gain calm water on upper levels. Rain and thunder storms were frequent and the men worn out by unexpected and exhaustive toils, openly cursed the expedition with all the anathemas of the whole army in Flanders or any other place. But the great soul of Mackenzie was unmoved. He reminded them of the promise to be faithful and remain with him to the end. He patiently painted in glowing colors the glory of their success-and he opened a fresh bottle and all went merry again, merry as wedding bells.

On the 9th of June they were nearing the broad, flat top of the Rocky mountains in that latitude. They were short of provisions, and had to eat porcupine steaks and wild parsnip salads or starve. Here they found a tribe of wild Indians who had never seen white men before. They were now surely beyond the limits of all previous explorations. Assured at length of the peaceful intentions of the explorers, the Indians ventured near enough to talk to the interpreters. They exhibited scraps of iron, and pointed to the west. Further efforts elicited from them the fact that their iron had been purchased from Indians farther west who lived on a great river, and who had obtained the iron from people who lived in houses on the great sea-white men like these-and who got the iron from ships large as islands that come in the sea. And now we see these children of the forest beset by the white men behind and before, and there is no longer any secret the white man does not find out, and the fateful terrors of these white men have followed them to their land-locked mountain retreat. Terror as it was to the Indian, it was a god-send to Mackenzie. He could now,

from these incoherent descriptions of places, rivers, mountains and marshes, reckon that he could reach the great river, which he at once supposed to be Carver's Oregon, in ten or twelve days, and from the great river reach the sea coast in a month. Mackenzie got the Indian that told him the story to draw a map on a piece of birch bark, which proved to be a very good map of the region. to be traversed. The Indian made the river run into an arm of the sea, and not into the great ocean. Mackenzie was sure the Indian was either mistaken or deceiving him. But he was doing neither. Mackenzie did not know of the existence of Fraser river. He did not know of Gray's discovery of the Columbia, but he did know of Carver's reported account of the "Oregon River of the West," running directly into the ocean, and this was the only great river he supposed could exist on the west slope of the Rocky mountains. He recalled Carver's statement that he had "learned that the foremost capital rivers on the continent of North America, viz. the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the river Bourbon and the Oregon or the River of the West have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, however, is rather further west." And thus from these mere glimmerings of geography assuming what from this "Height of Land" flowed four great rivers, one the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, another south into the California sea, another north into the icy sea, and the fourth west into the Pacific. Mackenzie had been down the north river to the icy sea, and he was sure he would now go west to the "Oregon River," and find his Indian map-maker mistaken.

On the 12th of June, 1793, MacKenzie crossed the narrow divide of the Rocky mountains and found it only eight hundred and seventeen paces (about half a mile) between the head waters of Peace river and the head waters of the Fraser. From there on to the Fraser the stream was a succession of torrents, cascades and little lakes, making traveling very bad. But not a word was said about turning back. The voyagers had imbibed some of the spirit of the intrepid and irresistible leader as well as much of the spirit they carefully packed from one portage to another as a most precious treasure; and on the 17th day of June, 1793, after cutting a passage through driftwood and underbrush for a mile, and dragging their canoe and goods through a swamp, they landed on the margin of the Fraser river of British Columbia. Simon Fraser, for whom the river was named, after this route had been opened by Mackenzie, afterwards passed over it and pronounced it the worst piece of forest traveling in North America. We here include a copy of the map the explorer made of this region, which not only shows by the dotted line his course from the Fraser river across to Salmon bay on the Straits of Georgia, but shows that Mackenzie did not follow the Fraser to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia or he would not have dotted in the lower course of the river as entering the ocean down by our Saddle mountain near Astoria. But this mistake, arising wholly from making a short cut across the land to the ocean instead of following the river to its mouth, was confirmed by Lewis and Clark, who also supposed that Mackenzie had been upon the upper waters of the Columbia. Simon Fraser made the same mistake when he saw the Fraser, and remained thus mistaken until 1808, when he followed the river down to its mouth in the Straits of Georgia, three hundred miles north of the mouth of the Columbia.

To conclude the narrative of Mackenzie's expedition across the Rocky mountains to the Pacific ocean, it is sufficient to add here that the Pacific ocean water which Mackenzie did reach is now known as "Bentinck North Arm," an inlet from the ocean into which the Bella Coola river discharges, about two hundred miles north of the international boundary. After exploring the country sufficient to show that he had in fact reached the waters of the Pacific ocean, Mackenzie mixed some vermilion in melted grease and painted in large letters on the south side of a great rock under which his party had camped, the following claim to the country: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second day of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three."

LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION, 1804

At the next session of congress after the purchase of Louisiana from France, President Jefferson sent a confidential message to congress containing a recommendation for an exploring expedition to the west, and congress promptly passed an act providing the necessary funds to make the exploration. The President lost no time in organizing the expedition known in all the histories as the Lewis and Clark expedition, appointing his private secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, to the chief command and Captain Wm. Clark, a brother of General George Rogers Clark, as second in command. As a matter of historical fact, the President had already, before he knew of the signing of the treaty of session at Paris, perfected arrangements with Captain Lewis to go west and organize a strong party to cross the continent to the mouth of the Columbia. river. This is proved by the fact that Lewis left Washington City within four days after the news was received by the President that the treaty had finally been executed. A large part of the year was spent in making preparations for the journey, and the President was so anxious for the safety and success of the men, that he prepared with his own hands the written instructions to show the nature of them, and the great care the President was taking to have success assured, and the natives treated with justice and consideration. "In all your intercourse with the natives," says Jefferson, "treat them in the most friendly and conciliatory manner which their own conduct will admit; allay all jealousies as to the object of your journey; satisfy them of its innocence; make them acquainted with the extent, position, character, peaceable and commercial dispositions of the United States; of our wish to be neighborly, friendly, and useful to them, and of our disposition to hold commercial intercourse with them, and to confer with them on the point most convenient for trade and the articles of the most desirable interchange for them and for us.'

The purchase of Louisiana and the great exploring expedition which followed the purchase is unique and unexampled in the history of mankind. After more than a century of enlightenment, consideration and development of this vast region, the momentous influences and consequences of that great transaction are not fully comprehended to this day. Vast regions and great nations, even those with more or less of what we call civilization, have in the history of the world, passed under the dominion of overwhelming military power, and lingered in decay or gone down to oblivion. But here is an empire of natural wealth in a vast region claimed and owned by the then foremost military power

on the globe, quietly, speedily and with a friendly hand, passing over to the youngest member of the family of nations, to be by it, in its inexperience in government, ruled and developed for the happiness and blessing of mankind. Not only does this ruling military power of the world, led and ruled by the most successful and brilliant soldier in the history of mankind, turn over this empire of rich territory to the keeping of the young republic of the west, but a greater power than the wealth and resources of the land goes with it-the power to rule two great oceans and dictate the peace of the world. Of the two master minds that wrought this great work, one has been denounced as an infidel, and everything that was dangerous to the well-being of his fellowman; while the other condemned throughout the world as an unprincipled adventurer to whom fickle fortune gave for an hour the evanescent glory of accidental sucShall we dare say that these two men did not consider the welfare of their fellowman in this great transaction? Shall we say they wrought wiser than they knew? Or shall we concede that there is a Divinity that shapes our ends?

cess.

So that in tracing the steps of this unorthodox President in the great task of acquiring almost half the territory of the United States, and setting up therein the ways, means and influences of education and civilization, we may form some opinion of his real character and great work. Neither President Jefferson nor anybody else outside of the native Indians knew anything about the vast region which had been acquired. Exploration of it by competent observers was necessary to find out what the wilderness was worth. Captains Lewis and Clark organized their party of forty-five persons in the winter of 1803, and made their start for Oregon in the following spring of 1804. There were no steamboats in those days, and the ascent of the river from St. Louis to the Mandan Indian villages on the Missouri river, almost one thousand miles as the river runs, above St. Louis, paddling and poling their boats up stream, occupied nearly five months' time. Of course the party stopped along the river to hunt game for their subsistence. But as game was everywhere in plenty, this could not have delayed them very much, which shows what a slow, toilsome undertaking these men had entered upon. And it shows the vast changes in the country in a hundred years, where now railroad trains running on both sides of the river will whisk the traveler over an equal distance in one day.

On this up-river trip, the volunteer explorers from Ohio and Kentucky found many animals they had never seen before. The vast numbers of buffalo the antelope, mule-deer, coyote, and prairie dog were all new to these men, and excited the wonder of both leaders and privates. With all the Indian tribes the explorers held councils, telling them of the changes of governors, and of President Jefferson, who was so anxious for their welfare. The Indians professed to be pleased with this news, and as the explorers distributed gifts, purported to come from the great Father at Washington, the natives agreed to everything, as they always did when there was anything to be had by being good. It is scarcely possible that the Indians at that day had any idea of a government, or the exercise of control by one man over a vast population, traveling as they did wherever they pleased.

As the cold weather of the approaching winter came on the party concluded