hen confined to the Atlantic Seaboard
were reached.

Through the efforts of Jefferson the expedition was equipped and
started. The Russian Government had promised its support but when the
party had crossed Russia, were within two hundred miles of the
Pacific, Ledyard was arrested by order of the Empress Catherine, the
then ruler of Russia, and the expedition broken up.

Jefferson became President in 1801. In 1803 on his recommendation,
Congress made an appropriation "for sending an exploring party to
trace the Missouri River to its source, to cross the highlands (i. e.
Rocky Mountains) and follow the best route thence to the Pacific
Ocean."

So interested was Jefferson that he personally prepared a long and
specific letter of instructions and had his confidential man placed in
charge. "The object of your mission," said Jefferson, in this letter
of instruction "is to explore the Missouri River and such other
streams as by their course would seem to offer the most direct and
practicable communication across the continent for the purpose of
commerce." This expedition known as the Lewis and Clark, made in
1804-1806, brought to light much information relative to the West and
demonstrated conclusively the feasibility of crossing overland as well
as the resources of the country traversed.

As a result the far West became the Mecca of the fur trappers and
traders. Commencing with the Astoria settlement in 1807, for the next
forty years or until the opening of the Oregon immigration in 1844,
they were practically the only whites to visit it outside of the
missionaries, who did more or less exploring and visiting the Indians
resulting in the Rev. Jason Lee in 1833 and Dr. Marcus Whitman in 1835
having established mission stations in Oregon.

The next record is of one Robert Mills of Virginia who suggested in a
publication on "Internal Improvements in Maryland, Virginia, and South
Carolina," issued in 1819, the advisability of connecting the head of
navigation of some one of the principal streams entering the Atlantic
with the Pacific Ocean by a system of steam propelled carriages. (H.
R. Doc. 173, 29th Cong.) This was before there was a mile of Steam
Railroad in the world, and under the then existing circumstances was
so chimerical as to hardly warrant mention.

In a weekly newspaper published in 1832 at Ann Arbor, Michigan, called
"The Emigrant," appeared what was probably the first suggestion in
print on the advisabilit