text:  Captain Clark's excursion in 1805 had for its object the discovery of a route to the Pacific by connecting the Missouri and Columbia rivers a subject on which even at that early period he expressed himself thus:--"I consider this track across the continent of immense advantage to the fur trade as all the furs collected in nine-tenths of the most valuable fur country in America may be conveyed to the mouth of the Columbia river and thence shipped to the East Indies by the 15th of August in each year and will of course reach Canton earlier than the furs which are annually exported from Montreal arrive in Great Britain