Soon after the British colonies in America had won, by a hard struggle, their political independence, their attention was strongly invited to the lucrative trade carried on for furs on the opposite shores of the continent. Ships from Boston, we have seen, arrived at Nootka Sound, after a perilous voyage of a whole year, to procure a cargo of furs. The infant republic was at first too much engrossed in making those arrangements required by the novelty of its political existence, and had a population too feeble in proportion to the vast extent of territory which it claimed, to think of stretching its dominion as far as the Pacific Ocean; but the course of political events suggested and fostered this ambition. The vast and fertile country of Louisiana, on the western bank of the Mississippi, had been ceded by Spain to the crown of France in 1763, and being deemed perhaps, by Napoleon, a useless possession, was sold by him to the United States, in 1804, for the sum of 6,000,000 francs. The Americans lost no time in surveying their new acquisitions, and in examining their productions, their capabilities, and their boundaries.

A tide of emigration had long before flowed to the westward: a predilection for the roving life of a hunter, and for the solitude of the woods, had induced many in the remote settlements of America, to retire as civilisation advanced, and thus to pilot the way, as it were, for those who explored the country with motives of a less unsocial character.