98 T. C. ELLIOTT
recognition. Jonathan Carver had come to London before him and the one assisted the other in appeals for financial aid and opportunity to return to the field of western trade and adventure, but Carver was an amateur as compared with Rogers. The second proposals or petitions of both, which are herewith reproduced, are incidents of those years.
As governor commandant at Mackinac from August, 1766 to December, 1767, Major Rogers had abundant opportunity to inquire of Indians and voyageurs and' traders about the country toward the Rocky mountains and beyond, and perhaps this accounts for the more intelligent details of the route outlined to be traveled by the expedition he, in 1772, proposed to lead to the Pacific ocean, as given in his second proposal. In 1765 he had intended to portage directly from the Minne- sota river into the Ouragon and evidently believed the upper Missouri was the Ouragon flowing westward from a source in Minnesota. But by 1772 he had learned that the Missouri must be ascended to its source before reaching the Ouragon. Here is early geographical data that has not before come to our attention; an outline of the outward journey by Lewis and Clark in 1805 and of part of the instructions by the British ministry to Captain James Cook in 1776. The existence of a Northwest Passage was naturally a subject for discussion among army officers in America as well as by officials and ship owners in England, and Major Rogers' proposal in a way only reflects that common topic of conjecture and con- versation. But, to his credit be it said, his "proposal" discloses knowledge of the transcontinental route which antedates that contained in any book or document or shown on any map prior to that date or for many years afterward.
In his first proposal Major Rogers states that he had em- ployed Indians, at his own expense, to follow the various streams to their outlets in the Pacific and the Northern ocean. That assertion must be dismissed as being merely in keeping with the character and needs of the man who made it, and as neither the whole truth or nothing but the truth. It is much
