that the United States had gained a world of wealth for its
fifteen million dollars. Before Lewis and Clark's feat, vague rumours
had come to the New England colonies of the riches to be had in the
west. The Russian Government had organized a strong company to trade for
furs with the natives of the Pacific coast. Captain Vancouver's report
of the north-west coast was corroborated by Captain Grey, who had
stumbled into the mouth of the Columbia; and before 1800 nearly thirty
Boston vessels yearly sailed to the Northern Pacific for the fur trade.

Eager to forestall the Hudson's Bay Company, now beginning to rub its
eyes and send explorers westward to bring Indians down to the bay,[6]
Alexander MacKenzie of the Nor' Westers pushed down the great river
named after him,[7] and forced his way across the northern Rockies to
the Pacific. Flotillas of North-West canoes quickly followed MacKenzie's
lead north to the arctics, south-west down the Columbia. At
Michilimackinac--one of the most lawless and roaring of the fur
posts--was an association known as the Mackinaw Company, made up of old
French hunters under English management, trading westward from the Lakes
to the Mississippi. Hudson Bay, Nor' Wester, and Mackinaw were daily
pressing closer and closer to that vast unoccupied Eldorado--the fur
country between the Missouri and the Saskatchewan, bounded eastward by
the Mississippi, west by the Pacific.

Possession is nine points out of ten. The question was who would get
possession first.

Unfortunately that question presented itself to three alert rivals at
the same time and in the same light. And the war began.

The Mackinaw traders had all they could handle from the Lakes to the
Mississippi. Therefore they did little but try to keep other traders out
of the western preserve. The Hudson's Bay remained in its somnolent
state till the very extremity of outrage brought such a mighty awakening
that it put its rivals to an eternal sleep. But the Nor' Westers were
not asleep. And John Jacob Astor of New York, who had accumulated what
was a gigantic fortune in those days as a purchaser of furs from America
and a seller to Europe, was not asleep. And Manual Lisa, a Spaniard, of
New Orleans, engaged at St. Louis in fur trade with the Osage tribes,
was not asleep.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Whom Bradbury and Irving and Chittenden have all conspired
to make immortal.]

[Footnote 2: While Lewis and Clark were on the Upper Missour