Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/88



62

very light. The Columbia could be navigated safely from the first of April to the middle of August.

Advantages for the fur trade; that trade should tend westward not eastward. Lewis considered the new route as offering special advantages for the development of a fur trade. ^ The greater part of the letter is devoted to an outline of the plan upon which this trade should be carried on. This outline, by the man who had actually investigated the subject at first hand, differed widely from that suggested to him by Jefferson in the instructions of April, 1803. Jefferson wished to know if the furs of the Columbia and those collected along the Pacific, as well as the Missouri River furs, might not be carried overland, by the Columbia and the Missouri, to the United States. Lewis found, on the contrary, that the furs of the upper Missouri streams might be carried across the mountains to the Columbia, where, their volume swelled by the furs collected on the Columbia and its branches, they could be carried to the mouth of the Columbia each year by the first of August. Thence they could be shipped to Canton, China, where they would arrive earlier than the annual shipments from

1 He does not think it equal to the route around South America for the transportation of East Indian goods to the United States and thence to Europe, although "many articles not bulky, brittle, or of a perishable nature may be conveyed to the United States by this route with more facility and less expense than by that at present practised."

His reference to oriental trade, in this letter, shows that the subject had been discussed between Jefferson and Lew