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specialize in furs, making up many of his cargoes at Montreal, the headquarters of the Northwest Company.

As he bought the Northwest Company's bales of beaver and otter skins for the purpose of a world exchange, Astor studied the methods and the organization by which the primary fur trade of the wilderness was conducted.

Aster's trading project. When Lewis and Clark returned from their journey, with information about the route to the Pacific and the opportunities for trade along the Missouri and Columbia rivers, Mr. Astor planned a brilliant trading project, similar in many v^ays to that of Mackenzie. He believed it would be possible, with his large capital and tested business ability, to gain control of the trade over a broad belt of country stretching from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. The first point was to push westward to the Mississippi and the Missouri. For this purpose he organized (1808) the American Fur Company, in which Astor himself was the principal stockholder. Next he proposed to establish a central station, at the mouth of the Columbia, for the trade of the region lying beyond the Rocky Mountains, and build a line of trading posts along the route explored by Lewis and Clark from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi.^ He planned to send from New York every fall one ship freighted with

1 Astor had already begun a trade along the Great Lakes, so that practically the great depot on the Pacific would be connected with his business office in New York.