y added to the national domain. The Government did
not yet know exactly what it had acquired, for the land was not only
unmapped but unexplored. Nobody could tell what were the boundary lines
which divided it from British America on the north and Mexico on the
south, for nobody knew much of the country through which these lines
ran; of most of it, indeed, nobody knew anything. On the new maps the
country now showed as part of the United States; but the Indians who
alone inhabited it were as little affected by the transfer as was the
game they hunted.

Need for its Exploration.

Even the Northwestern portion of the land definitely ceded to the United
States by Great Britain in Jay's treaty was still left in actual
possession of the Indian tribes, while the few whites who lived among
them were traders owing allegiance to the British Government. The
head-waters of the Mississippi and the beautiful country lying round
them were known only in a vague way; and it was necessary to explore and
formally take possession of this land of lakes, glades, and forests.

Beyond the Mississippi all that was really well known was the territory
in the immediate neighbourhood of the little French villages near the
mouth of the Missouri. The creole traders of these villages, and an
occasional venturous American, had gone up the Mississippi to the
country of the Sioux and the Mandans, where they had trapped and hunted
and traded for furs with the Indians. At the northern most points that
they reached they occasionally encountered traders who had travelled
south or southwesterly from the wintry regions where the British fur
companies reigned supreme. The headwaters of the Missouri were
absolutely unknown; nobody had penetrated the great plains, the vast
seas of grass through which the Platte, the Little Missouri, and the
Yellowstone ran. What lay beyond them, and between them and the Pacific,
was not even guessed at. The Rocky Mountains were not known to exist, so
far as the territory newly acquired by the United States was concerned,
although under the name of "Stonies" their northern extensions in
British America were already down on some maps.

The National Government Undertakes the Work.

The West had passed beyond its first stage of uncontrolled
individualism. Neither exploring nor fighting was thenceforth to be the
work only of the individual settlers. The National Government was making
its weight felt more and more in the W