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20 the object of this finally successful effort the opening of "direct water communication from sea to sea formed by the bed of the Missouri, and perhaps the Oregon." Jefferson's deep interest in the records of the explorations effected by Lewis and Clark, which the paper following this so strongly exhibits, relates, however, more to their value to science than to commerce. In his letters to his correspondents among the men of science of his day the references to the journals of Lewis and Clark are frequent, generally it is to express his regrets over the delay in the publication of them. In the purposes of Jefferson, therefore, science and commerce appear to divide the honors about equally as direct beneficiaries from this venture. Commercial relations were to be developed with all the aboriginal inhabitants along this water way even to the shores of the Pacific. These natives were to be bound to us by "assiduously cultivating their interests and their affections." Through the medium of the unity thus developed America was to have a "hemisphere to itself." With his humanitarian policy in commerce he would win the native tribes to agriculture and to friendship. He hailed the Astor enterprise as the natural sequel to the Lewis and Clark exploration. In 1813 he writes Astor: "I view it [the Astor establishment on the Columbia, 1811–1813] as the germ of a great, free, and independent empire on that side of our continent, and that liberty and self-government spreading from that as well as this side, will ensure their complete establishment over the whole." And Jefferson's devout wish was father of the next compliment to Astor: "It must be still more gratifying to yourself to foresee that your name will be handed down with that of Columbus and Raleigh, as father of the establishment and founder of such an empire." (This coming from the author of the Lewis and Clark exploration which opened this region to Astor is modesty and magnanimity