roamed over its trackless spaces, was barely ninety thousand persons,
of whom forty thousand were negro slaves. The civilized inhabitants
were principally French, or descendants of French, with a few Spanish,
Germans, English, and Americans.

The purchase of this tremendous slice of territory could not be complete
without an approval of the bargain by the United States Senate. Great
opposition to this was immediately excited by people in various parts
of the Union, especially in New England, where there was a very bitter
feeling against the prime mover in this business,--Thomas Jefferson,
then President of the United States. The scheme was ridiculed by persons
who insisted that the region was not only wild and unexplored, but
uninhabitable and worthless. They derided "The Jefferson Purchase," as
they called it, as a useless piece of extravagance and folly; and, in
addition to its being a foolish bargain, it was urged that President
Jefferson had no right, under the constitution of the United States, to
add any territory to the area of the Republic.

Nevertheless, a majority of the people were in favor of the purchase,
and the bargain was duly approved by the United States Senate; that
body, July 31, 1803, just three months after the execution of the treaty
of cession, formally ratified the important agreement between the two
governments. The dominion of the United States was now extended across
the entire continent of North America, reaching from the Atlantic to the
Pacific. The Territory of Oregon was already ours.

This momentous transfer took place one hundred years ago, when almost
nothing was known of the region so summarily handed from the government
of France to the government of the American Republic. Few white men had
ever traversed those trackless plains, or scaled the frowning ranges of