o England. Captain Crowell Hatch of
Cambridge, Samuel Brown, a trader of Boston, and John Marden Pintard of
the New York firm of Lewis Pintard Company were also of the little
coterie.

[Illustration: Departure of the _Columbia_ and the _Lady Washington_.
Drawn by George Davidson, a member of the Expedition. Photographed by
courtesy of the present owner, Mrs. Abigail Quincy Twombly.]

If Captain Cook's crew had sold one-third of a water-rotted cargo of
otter furs in China for ten thousand dollars, why, these Boston men
asked themselves, could not ships fitted expressly for the fur trade
capture a fortune in trade on that unoccupied strip of coast between
Russian Alaska, on the north, and New Spain, on the south?

"There is a rich harvest to be reaped by those who are on the ground
first out there," remarked Joseph Barrell.

Then the thing was to be on the ground first--that {212} was the
unanimous decision of the shrewd-headed men gathered in Bulfinch's
study.

[Illustration: Charles Bulfinch.]

The sequence was that Charles Bulfinch and the other five at once
formed a partnership with a capital of fifty thousand dollars, divided
into fourteen shares, for trade on the Pacific. This was ten years
before Lewis and Clark reached the Columbia, almost twenty years before
Astor had thought of his Pacific Company. The Columbia, a full-rigged
two-decker, two hundred and twelve tons and eighty-three feet long,
mounting {213} ten guns, which had been built fourteen years before on
Hobart's Landing, North River, was immediately purchased. But a
smaller ship to cruise about inland waters and collect furs was also
needed; and for this purpose the partners bought the _Lady Washington_,
a little sloop of ninety tons. Captain John Kendrick of the merchant
marine was chosen to command the _Columbia_, Robert Gray, a native of
Rhode Island, who had served in the revolutionary navy, a friend of
Kendrick's, to be master of the _Lady Washington_. Kendrick was of
middle age, cautious almost to indecision; but Gray was younger with
the daring characteristic of youth.

In order to insure a good reception for the ships, letters were
obtained from the federal government to foreign powers. Massachusetts
furnished passports; and the Spanish minister to the United States gave
letters to the viceroy of New Spain. Just how the information of
Boston plans to intrude on the Pacific coast was received by New Spain
may be judged by the co