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no A History of the Pacific Northwest

lant captain was no match for the shrewd American traders, or for the well-organized British companycontrolling the Columbia River region, and therefore his venture turned out a complete failure.

Wyeth's trading scheme; the first trip to Oregon. In the same year that Bonneville set out for the West an enterprising Bostonian, Captain Nathaniel J. Wyeth, also entered the Oregon country for the purpose of trade. Wyeth had become familiar with the writings of Hall J. Kelley concerning Oregon,^ and in the summer of 1831 he arranged to send a ship around Cape Horn while he, with a party of landsmen, was to proceed across the country hoping to meet the vessel near the mouth of the Columbia. A company of Boston merchants furnished the vessel, which sailed in the fall of 1 83 1. Wyeth gathered a small party of men, formed a sort of "Wild West "camp on an island in Boston Harbour, greatly to the astonishment of most people, and in spring was ready to begin the overland march. Knowing that the trip would have to be made partly by land and partly by water, the ingenious Yankee invented a machine which could be used either as a wagon bed or a boat. This the Latin scholars at Harvard College named the "Nat Wyethium." He found it less useful than at first supposed and left it at St. Louis. At that place Wyeth and his men joined a party of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company under William L. Sublette, with whom

1 Kelley published a plan for the colonization of Oregon, and other tracts.