Among other things, Pursley told Lieutenant Pike "that he had found gold on the head waters of the Platte, and had carried some of the virgin ore about with him in his shot-pouch for months; but being in doubt whether he should ever again behold the civilized world, and having wholly discarded all the ideal value with which mankind has stamped that metal, he threw the sample away; that he had imprudently mentioned it to the Spaniards, who had frequently importuned him to go and show them the place, though, conceiving it to lie in our territory, he had always refused, and was fearful that his doing so might prove an obstacle to his leaving the country."
This man little dreamed that after lying dormant half a century, the discovery of which he thought so little would one day be the making of a great State.
FOOTNOTE
[1] Daniel Boone went from Kentucky to Missouri in 1794, while it was yet a Spanish province. The Spanish governor allotted him ten thousand acres in the District of St. Charles, and also made him syndic of the district. The same want of forecast which had exiled him from Kentucky lost him this grant. In his old age he was compelled to appeal to Congress for relief, that body granting him one thousand arpents of land in the District of St. Charles. In 1811 he was still following the business of a trapper. A traveller saw him returning home, at eighty-four years of age, with sixty beaver-skins. He was then a hale old man. Boone County and Booneville, Mo., are named for him.
THE FLAG IN OREGON.
We have seen that Mr. Jefferson's plan for securing the commerce of the Great West needed two things for its success. One was a road across the continent. This had been found. The other want was a port on the Pacific. When this had been met, not only would the resources of Louisiana lie open to East and West, but the way to India be found, and the unity of America secured for all time.
As emigration was only just beginning to cross the Mississippi, it scarcely weighed in the balance with commerce, but was as sure to follow it as grass to grow or water run.
Our Government having thus cleared the way, the St. Louis traders were not slow to avail themselves of it. In 1808 they organized the Missouri Fur Company, which immediately sent an agent into the coveted territory, where he set up a trading-house known as Post Henry on the Lewis River.
John Jacob Astor, a merchant of New York, conceived the idea of carrying out the whole scheme as formulated in Mr. Jefferson's mind, not as a monopolist, protected by Government with exclusive privileges, but as a private person, who undertakes an enterprise on his own judgment, and backs it up with his own means.
Mr. Astor was a shrewd and careful merchant who had grown very wealthy from the profits of the fur-trade. He had the money. He knew the price of a beaver or an otter skin in every market of the world. He had the whole A B C of commerce at his fingers' ends. Uniformly successful in whatever he undertook, his judgment inspired confidence in others, as superior business tact is sure to do; hence Mr. Astor had no difficulty in securing partners in his enterprise. It was seen that the key to success lay in the hands of whoever should first occupy the rich fur-bearing valleys of the Columbia River.