CHAPTER III
ORIGIN OF THE LEWIS AND CLARK EXPEDITION
What was known about the Northwest Coast in the year 1801. Mackenzie's error in supposing the Columbia to be identical with the river he descended, for some days, in 1793 shows how tardily correct geographical knowledge concerning the Pacific Northwest was being accumulated. The coast line, indeed, had now been pretty accurately ascertained. The estuaries of the rivers were laid down on the map of Vancouver. The possibility of reaching the coast overland, from Fort Chipewyan, had been demonstrated by Mackenzie, who also hazarded a happy guess as to the relation between the upper Columbia and the river systems connecting with Hudson Bay. But when Mackenzie published his "Voyages," in 1801, nothing definite was yet known about the relation between the Columbia, flowing into the Pacific near the 46th parallel, and the Missouri or other rivers rising in the Rocky Mountains and flowing southward toward the Gulf of Mexico. Traditions, or vague surmises, such as Jonathan Carver published in 1778, about a "River of the West," or "Oregon," whatever their source, cannot be taken for actual geographical knowledge.
How the Columbia might be traced; David
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