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ADVERTISEMENT.

THAT portion of the North American Continent known by the name of the Oregon Territory, lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, has for many years been almost a blank in the history of the United States. It has, however, frequently been the subject of resolutions and reports in Congress, of communications between the different branches of the government, and of discussion with the ministers of foreign powers. Still, any strong interest in regard to it has been confined to a few, and it has been for the most part overlooked amid other topics of the day. As a subject involving in it considerations connected with commerce, colonization, and territorial boundaries, it is now daily growing in impor

tance.

The History of the Expedition of Captains Lewis and Clarke, during the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, by order of the Government of the United States, is the first narrative which diffused widely among us a knowledge of this ter

ritory, and the intermediate country from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains. It presents a description of a wild and magnificent region, unvisited before by white men, with its barbarous tribes, their character and habits, and abounding in herds of buffalo, deer, and antelope, outnumbering the human tenants of the land. The work being now nearly out of print, it seemed to the publishers a suitable time to put forth an edition of the Journal of Lewis and Clarke pruned of unimportant details, with a sketch of the progress of maritime discovery on the Pacific coast, a summary account of lier attempts to penetrate this vast western wilderness, and such extracts and illustrations from the narratives of later travellers, led by objects of trade, the love of science, or religious zeal, as the limits of the undertaking would allow.

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The matter of the original journal is indicated by inverted commas, and where portions of it, embracing minute and uninteresting particulars, have been omitted, the leading facts have been briefly stated by the editor in his own words, so that the connexion of the narrative is preserved unbroken, and nothing of importance is lost to the reader. To the lamented death of Captain Lewis, while his manuscript was not

ADVERTISEMENT.

yet fully prepared for publication, are doubtless in a great measure to be ascribed many verbal inaccuracies which appear in the original edition, and which the present editor, with a scrupulous avoidance of any change of the evident ly intended meaning of the text, has endeav oured to correct. The seventh chapter of the second volume, giving an account of the quadrupeds, birds, and plants found on the Colum. bia and its tributaries, has, to avoid unnecessary interruption of the course of the narrative, been transferred to the appendix.

This Journal must ever retain a high degree of interest, as the account of the first, and what is likely always to remain the only voyage made by Indian or white man, in boats or canoes stemming the current and rapids of the Missouri by the aid of sails, oars, pole, and towline, from the point where its waters discharge themselves into the Mississippi to its sources in the Rocky Mountains. They and their party were also the first white men who, after crossing the mountains, discovered the head-waters of the Columbia River, and were borne by its rapid current to the bay where its tumultuous waters meet the stormy tides of the Pacific. Nor has any traveller followed them in tracing the windings of the Upper Missouri from the

villages of the Mandans, by its falls and mountain gates, almost to the first bubblings of its fountain.

A map accompanies the work, which, by its accuracy and completeness, will prove a ready guide to the attentive reader.

The publishers here tender their acknowledgments to G. R. Clarke, Esq., for the kind and liberal manner in which, in behalf of himself and the other relatives of the distinguished traveller, he has expressed his consent to this publication. H. & B. '

New-York, March, 1842.

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