OREGON MEANING, ORIGIN AND APPLICATION 327
the dead are there! And millions in those solitudes, since first the flight of years began, have laid them down in their last sleep the dead reign there alone!" This poem was published first, in 1817, and at once the boyhood effort, portraying the boundless majesty of nature, was stamped upon the minds and emotions of others and the word "Oregon" thereby became fixed and perpetual in the English language. 28
President Jefferson, in his efforts to develop the resources of the nation west of the Missisippi, adopted the plan outlined by Captain Carver of carrying on a trade up the Missouri across the Rockies and down the Columbia to the Pacific, and in 1803, sent Captains Lewis and Clark on an exploring expe- dition across the continent with instructions, among which were, "The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River, and such principal streams of it, as by its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, may offer the most direct and practicable water communication across the continent, for the purpose of commerce". And "Should you reach the Pacific Ocean, inform yourself of the circum- stances which may decide whether the furs of those parts may not be collected as advantageously at the head of the Missouri (convenient as is supposed to be the waters of the Colorado and Oregon or Columbia) as at Nootka sound, or any other point of that coast; and that trade may be consequently con- ducted through the Missouri and the United States more beneficially than by the circumnavigation now practiced." 29
Lewis and Clark completed their mission in 1806 and when nearing home on their return journey met many parties ascend- ing the Missouri on their way to the wilderness to participate in the fur trade with the aborigines,3 for as above quoted, no native tribe was so poor, even if it inhabited hyperborean forests, that it did not excite the cupidity of the white man. John Jacob Astor, a practical person, conceived the idea of putting into operation Captain Carver's plan and after form- ing the Pacific Fur Company, in 1810, laid a scheme to erect trading posts across the continent, the first one established
28 Bryant's Poetical Works.
29 Thwaites, Lewis and Clark, VII, 248, 251.
30 Chittenden's American Fur Trade.
