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1832] for their oil, and seals for their skins? A score of our farmers seeing that Nantucket and New Bedford had acquired riches and independence by traversing the sea to the distant shores of the Pacific, determined to do something like it by land. Their ardor seemed to have hidden from their eyes the mighty difference between the facility of passing in a ship with the aid of sails, progressing day and night, by skilfully managing the winds and the helm, and that of a complicated wagon upon wheels, their journey to be over mountains and rivers, and through hostile tribes of savages who dreaded and hated the sight of a white man.

This novel expedition was not however the original or spontaneous notion of Mr. Nathaniel J. Wyeth, nor was it entirely owing to the publications of Lewis & Clarke or Mackenzie. Nor was it entirely owing to the enterprise of Messrs. Barrel, Hatch and Bulfinch, who fitted out two vessels that sailed form Boston in 1787, commanded by