You will have noticed that quite a number of United States citizens
(mostly born British subjects in New England) had taken part in the
north-west fur trade immediately after the British conquest of Canada
disposed of French monopolies. There were Jonathan Carver and Peter
Pond, for example; and a much more worthy person than the last
named--Daniel W. Harmon, a New Englander, who entered the service of
the North-west Company in 1800, and followed in Mackenzie's footsteps
to the upper Fraser River and the vicinity of the Skeena. Simon Fraser
also, whose tracing of the Fraser River from its upper waters to the
Pacific coast we shall presently deal with, was a native of Vermont,
though his father came from Scotland. The furs which began to
penetrate into the United States by way of Detroit and Niagara, the
rising scale of luxury in dress in the towns of the eastern seaboard
of the United States, the voyages of American whalers up the west
coast of North America (including the discovery of the Columbia River
in 1792 by Captain Robert Gray), the purchase of Louisiana from the
Emperor Napoleon in 1804--with the vague claim it gave to the coast
line of Oregon on the Pacific: all these circumstances inspired
far-sighted persons in the United States at the beginning of the
nineteenth century with a wish to secure for their Government and
commerce a share in the fur trade and in these wonderful new lands of
the Pacific watershed.
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