The United States Borders the Wilderness—American Ships to the Pacific Coast—The North-West Company—Mackenzie Spans the Continent—Meares and Vancouver Baffled by Breakers—Captain Robert Gray, Victor—The Columbia at Last—The Louisiana Purchase a Pig in a Poke, and a Boundless Wilderness—Claims All Round to the Centre—The Perfidious Napoleon—The Spanish Sentinel Steps Back. Spain had good reason to turn a watchful eye on the people of the Atlantic seaboard. No sooner was the war for independence triumphantly concluded than they began to look intently toward the vast Wilderness that made up the bulk of the continent, a region so little understood, and the object of so many uncertain, conflicting, and ill-founded claims. Russia was beginning to assert claims from the north-west, Spain had acquired the rights and claims of France, and, with her own, wanted everything west of the Mississippi, while Great Britain advanced from the north-east. The middle road was open to the Americans. The new nation managed its affairs with great skill. Though Spain and France combined to obstruct the westward movement of the young country, and particularly to prevent it from securing any territory whatever near the mouth of the Mississippi, so as to shut it off from free navigation, the treaty of 1783 gave the United States all the country east of the great river and south of the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Yazoo. Notwithstanding opposition, the new Government positively held a huge area, and was next-door neighbour to the delta of the Mississippi as well as upon the threshold of the great undefined Wilderness, known as Louisiana, bordering the Father of Waters on the west. This immense extension of their domain gave a fresh impulse to American exploration and settlement. They loved the wild woods and came over the crest of the Alleghanies in large numbers, erecting their log dwellings here, there, and everywhere, till it was not long before the fertile region between the Mississippi and the eastern mountains was filling with settlements. [Illustration: Summits of the Backbone. Gray's Peak, 14,341 feet. Torrey's Peak, 14,336 feet. Photograph by U. S. Geol. Survey.]