As a boy he had dreamed of the Orient. Now his dreams were to be realized. From the Western states his trains came eastward heavily loaded with lumber from the great forests of Oregon and Washington. To operate most profitably, it was apparent that these trains should not go west empty, but filled with merchandise. But there were not enough people in these Western states to consume the merchandise the trains could carry. Beyond the Pacific, however, were millions of people. China and Japan needed many things. Why should not his railroads carry westward merchandise for these great markets of the Orient? With characteristic thoroughness, Mr. Hill sent agents to China to study the food-problem, and the best way to make a market there for American flour. They reported the existence of a great market for flour, cotton, and steel. To gain this business was to wage industrial warfare with Belgium and Great Britain, who had a cheap all-water route to the Orient by way of the Suez Canal. But as his railroads extended only to the Pacific shore, a great ocean still lay between him and these alluring markets. To solve this problem, Mr. Hill formed, in 1900, the Great Northern Steamship Company, and built the Minnesota and the Dakota, the greatest vessels ever built flying the American flag, to run between Seattle and Yokohama and Hong Kong. But in this great venture, with its promise of success, Mr. Hill encountered disappointment, for the policy of the United States was unfavorable, rates and regulations made the cost of the operation of the ships excessive, and he was at last forced by circumstances to withdraw from the Oriental field. Meanwhile, the vast empire of the Northwest was rapidly filling up with settlers. In a single year eighteen thousand farmers located along the Great Northern, and each year, farther and farther back from the tracks, new lands were developed and new homes were located where only a few years before the buffalo and the Indians had wandered. Next after the railroad, it was the farm which held the closest interest of the empire-builder. Second only to Mr. Hill’s belief in the farm as the foundation of national prosperity was his interest in the discovery and development of new sources of mineral wealth. As a young man he had recognized the tremendous part which coal was to play in the history of transportation and the consequent development of the country. For years he had studied the coal deposits of the Northwest, and there was probably no one better informed than he regarding their quality, extent, and location.