During this time, Romans proposed to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, Secretary of State for the Colonies and President of the Board of Trade and Foreign Plantations, an expedition to the northeastern parts of Asia. Romans gave more details of his scheme to Hugh Williamson, a fellow member of the American Philosophical Society. To Williamson, Romans expounded his plan for an expedition to explore the Mississippi River basin and the Great Lakes, then moving westward to the Pacific coast. From there, the expedition would cross the Pacific Ocean to Asia, and travel through Russia, eventually reaching Great Britain. This was thirty years before President Thomas Jefferson commissioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and almost twenty years before Alexander MacKenzie's crossing of the Canadian Arctic.