It was thus a Scotchman who achieved that of
which La Verendrye had so long dreamed; and with no aid from the
state but with only the resources of a trading company.
Ten years later, when France sold to the United States her last
remaining territory of Louisiana, the American Government
equipped an expedition under Lewis and Clark to cross the Rocky
Mountains by way of the Missouri, the route from which the La
Verendrye brothers had been obliged to turn back. The party began
the ascent of the Missouri on May 14, 1804, and arrived in the
Mandan country in the late autumn. Here they spent the winter of
1804-05. Not until November 15, 1805, had they completed the hard
journey across the Rocky Mountains and reached the mouth of the
Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean. Little did La Verendrye, in
his eager search for the Western Sea, imagine the difficulties to
be encountered and the hardships to be endured by those who were
destined, in later days, to realize his dream.
CHAPTER VI. The Valley Of The Ohio
Almost at the moment in 1749 when British ships were lying at
anchor in Halifax harbor and sending to shore hundreds of
boatloads of dazed and expectant settlers for the new colony,
there had set out from Montreal, in the interests of France, an
expedition with designs so far-reaching that we wonder still at
the stupendous issues involved in efforts which seem so petty.
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