Captains Lewis and Clark, with about thirty men, including some Kentucky
hunters, on an overland journey to the mouth of the Columbia. They
ascended the Missouri, crossed the mountains at the source of that
river, and following the course of the Columbia, reached the shores of
the Pacific, where they were forced to winter. The report which they
made of their expedition to the United States government created a
lively sensation.[B]

[Footnote A: McKenzie's Travels.]

[Footnote B: Lewis and Clark's Report.]

Mr. John Jacob Astor, a New York merchant, who conducted almost alone
the trade in furs south of the great lakes Huron and Superior, and who
had acquired by that commerce a prodigious fortune, thought to augment
it by forming on the banks of the Columbia an establishment of which the
principal or supply factory should be at the mouth of that river. He
communicated his views to the agents of the Northwest Company; he was
even desirous of forming the proposed establishment in concert with
them; but after some negotiations, the inland or wintering partners of
that association of fur-traders having rejected the plan, Mr. Astor
determined to make the attempt alone. He needed for the success of his
enterprise, men long versed in the Indian trade, and he soon found them.
Mr. Alexander M'Kay (the same who had accompanied Sir Alexander M'Kenzie
in his travels overland), a bold and enterprising man, left the
Northwest Company to join him; and soon after, Messrs Duncan M'Dougal
and Donald M'Kenzie (also in the service of the company) and Messrs.
David Stuart and Robert Stuart, all of Canada, did the same. At length,
in the winter of 1810, a Mr. Wilson Price Hunt of St. Louis, on the
Mississippi, having also joined them, they determined that the