the continent by this route will be undertaken with as little concern as a voyage across the Atlantic is at present."
The suggestion in Lewis's letter that the Northwest Company of Canada would probably seek the lower Columbia for the sake of the China market is interesting in view of the activities of that company at this very time.
Plans of the Northwest Company; Mackenzie's plan again; its execution deferred. We recall that Mackenzie, in 1801, published his plan for a union of the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies with a view to engross the fur trade of the entire region of North America above the forty-fifth parallel. This plan contemplated utilizing the mouth of the Columbia on the Pacific and Hudson Bay on the Atlantic side as the sea-ports serving a world trade, the two ports being connected by a great line of trading posts along the main water courses east and west of the Rockies. Troubles in Canada, between the two great companies, and within the Northwest Company's group itself, delayed all plans of carrying the trade into the region beyond the Rockies explored in part by Mackenzie in
1793 The company crosses the Rockies. In 1805, the Northwest Company, stimulated by a knowledge of the effects of the Lewis and Clark expedition, resolved to plant trading stations west of the Rocky Mountains in, as they supposed from Mackenzie's report, the region of the Columbia River. Mr. Simon Fraser in the
