One route across Texas passed through the town of San Antonio, with a population of about two thousand, and in Texas there were at that time besides the people of San Antonio about five thousand others, a mixture of Spanish creoles, some French, some Americans, and a few civilised natives. Another road was by way of Red River, and still another, the least known, by way of the Arkansas. At Lemhi Pass, Lewis and Clark had heard from a Ute of these towns about twenty days' journey to the south, and at Council Bluffs others had stated that Santa Fé was twenty-five days' journey from there. One white man, McClellan, was planning a tour to Santa Fé about the time of Lewis and Clark's return, and it is said that certain Mallet brothers with six others, before the end of the eighteenth century, went up from St. Louis and struck from the Missouri to the Rio Grande settlements. One Baptiste LaLande, in the employ of Morrison, an American merchant, had gone there in 1804 with goods to trade, but had never returned, for he found the country attractive and himself out of reach of his employer. All merchandise for the Rio Grande settlements was brought by a long, difficult road from Mexico, and prices were enormous by the time the goods arrived at Santa Fé. The government and the governor too had to have their bonus. The Americans knew of these conditions, and hence early began to speculate on the possibility of transporting merchandise overland from St. Louis to compete. As the governor and the government were everything in that region, and permission to trade, to trap, or merely to enter or leave the land had to be first obtained from the autocratic head, going to Santa Fé to trade and entering or approaching the Spanish domain in any way were not trifling matters; more particularly as the point at which American jurisdiction ended and that of Spain began was as uncertain as the point where the north wind ceased to blow. Few Americans therefore had attempted it. The first to make the entry did so almost involuntarily. He was a man from Kentucky, James Pursley, who was trapping in the region west of St. Louis in 1802—before the purchase of Louisiana by the United States.