Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/98

 and back and several government exploring parties prior to 1829. There also had grown up a brisk trade with Santa Fé. But the epoch of great travel was made possible by the coming of steam to the Missouri as a permanent factor in 1829.

The New Englanders required two hundred years to reach the Mississippi. Even at that they passed through immense areas without pausing to explore thoroughly, let alone settle them. Yet within eighteen years from the morning Lander rode his borrowed mule into sleepy St. Charles, the steamboat on the Missouri was to be responsible for a quarter of a million square miles of the Oregon country being settled. Within the same period more than half a million square miles were to be sliced off from Mexico, with Americans occupying a thousand miles of the Pacific coast. This expansion was even to surpass the overrunning of Europe by eastern hordes.

Lander tarried by the boat although the mountain men and boatmen were camped near by. Two thoughts now popped into his mind, and neither had to do with migrations: his love for Susette and a commercial inspiration. Although a mountain man only in embryo he had no vision