TlI,E EXPLORATION OF, WESTERN AMERICA, • - 1800-1850 - -
By E. W. Gilbert- •
. Modern American historians emphasize the influence of the frontier life on the American temperament. For generations ' adventurous ' Americans could gel west and make' a - living in -new -districts, 'and their descendants: still-display seine of the .• old restlessness and indifference to law. That the pioneers "bad alitioirt Unlimited opportunities is well shown by Mr. E.-W. ':-Cilbert's Exploration of Western America, 1800-1850 (Cana- 1 hridge University Press, 12s. 6d.)—the first serious attempt, rm the geographer's standpoint,' to show how half- the -Continent, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, was opened up. ,When Napoleon sold " Louisiana " to the United States in -I, 18p3 for about 23„000,000, most of this large region which we
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now call the Middle West was a blank on the map, and of iSpimish California to the west of it only the coast was known. president Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark in 1804 to explore ; 'what he supposed to be "the direct water-communication -frcem sea to sea," up the Missouri and, down the Oregon— instructions Which show that the President had -no idea of the -size of the Rockies, which the explorers took four months' to ; "cross. Fur-trader fineficed-by .Astor later found their way over-the Central Rockies, while Pike, after whom Pike's
' i peak is named, was the first of many explorers of the soul herrn i ranges who opened the Santa Fe -trail and the route onward to 'California. - Mr. : GilherVs chapters on, the topography, 41imate, vegetation and 'Tatum, and on the native Indians, are 'concise and clear, and lie gives a long and most illuminating aeries of maps and diagrams. By 1850 the main features' of the region were well understood, but the work of settlement • fias been slow and the frontier spirit is hardly extinct. :
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