His mind was filled with crude projects for securing the commerce of the north-west coast, not for England, but for America, and America was now a free republic. So he had imbibed at least the spirit of what is now known as the Monroe Doctrine. Ledyard first tried to get American merchants to fit out a ship for him. Failing in this he went to France, thinking to secure there the help he wanted. It happened that while Ledyard was trying to get up a company to carry on his schemes, Louis XVI. was fitting out La Peyrouse to follow up Cook's track in the Pacific, and so make good what that eminent navigator had failed to make complete. Ledyard importuned everybody. Haunting those who would listen to him, borrowing money first from one and then another in order to live, sometimes without a crown in his pocket, always repulsed, but never despairing, the would-be explorer woke and slept on his one ever-present idea. "I die with anxiety," he says to a friend, "to be on the back of the American States, after having penetrated to the Pacific Ocean. There is an extensive field for the acquirement of honest fame. The American Revolution invites to a thorough discovery of the continent. It was necessary that a European should discover America, but in the name of love of country let a native explore its resources and boundaries. It is my wish to be that man." Thomas Jefferson was, at this time (1785), our minister to France, "in every word and deed the representative of a young, vigorous and determined state." Ledyard often sought his counsel and aid. Struck by Ledyard's uncommon devotion to his one idea, Jefferson said to him one day, "Why not go by land to Kamschatka, cross over in some of the Russian vessels to Nootka Sound, fall down into the latitude of the Missouri, and penetrate to and through that to the United States?" This conversation curiously shows us that, at the time the American Union was first formed, more was known about Kamschatka than about the region lying between the Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean. Through Siberia, at least, there was a travelled route, while from the Mississippi to the Pacific there was none. The conversation is therefore an instructive starting-point in the history of our country. Although the enterprise itself failed to bear fruit at this time, the coming together of these two men, one of whom became the apostle of the American idea in its broadest sense, was like the striking together of flint and steel. Fire followed it. Ledyard had the best knowledge of the subject. Ledyard pointed out the way. Ledyard had given Jefferson something to ponder, which, in his sagacious mind, soon grew to a question of highest national importance.