named Cruzatte had a post in 1802 at a point two miles above old Council Bluffs, so that all through this eastern portion of the Wilderness white men had scatteringly penetrated. The French had been on the Saskatchewan before the eighteenth century was half over, and ten years before the American purchase of Louisiana Mackenzie had crossed to the Pacific by way of Peace River Pass. But beyond the Rocky Mountains no one appears to have been away from the coast besides Escalante coming up from Santa Fé to Utah Lake, and Mackenzie from Fort Chepewyan to the shore of the Pacific at King Island (lat. 52° N.), so that the region Lewis and Clark designed to enter beyond the mountains was absolutely unknown territory, outside of the Amerinds themselves. [Illustration: Mount Hood—From Cloud Cap Inn. From _Wonderland, 1903_—Northern Pacific Railway.] Captain Lewis was ready to start on this traverse before the official transfer of the Louisiana region from France to the United States had been made. His plan was to go to La Charette, the farthest French settlement up the Missouri, a few miles above St. Louis, and there spend the winter of 1803-04, the season being so far advanced that it was not considered advisable to make the final start till spring opened again and they would have a chance to go as far as possible before another winter began. But the Spanish officers there objected to Lewis's entering the territory and a camp was made on the American side of the river, about opposite the mouth of the Missouri. The purpose of the expedition was communicated to the foreign ministers, and passports obtained from France and Great Britain. Spain was particularly jealous of this movement or any other which led to crossing the Mississippi, and had opposed the right of the United States by the Louisiana Purchase to anything more than the region around New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi; they resented Napoleon's selling even that. Hence Spain looked upon the upper country as still hers. The situation, considering the indefinite character of the whole transaction, was full of disagreeable possibilities. Perhaps this was Napoleon's intention. Therefore Jefferson in his instructions to Captain Lewis particularly says: "If a superior force, authorised or unauthorised, by a nation, should be arrayed against your further passage, and inflexibly determined to arrest it, you must decline its further pursuit and return." The British fur companies, jealous of each other, were still more jealous of encroachments on their trading grounds and their attitude toward the expedition was uncertain.