impatient of longer delay, set out on his own responsibility, and got to within two hundred miles of Kamchatka, when he was arrested by an order of the Empress and taken back to Poland, where he was released. "Thus failed," writes Jefferson, "the first attempt to explore the western part of our Northern Continent." The attempt failed, but Jefferson's interest in the exploration of this region did not die with it. Of a second attempt some years later he writes: "In 1792, I proposed to the American Philosophical Society that we should set on foot a subscription to engage some competent person to explore that region in an opposite direction—that is, by ascending the Missouri, crossing the Stony Mountains, and descending the nearest river to the Pacific." This plan too was attempted, but the seriousness of the projector's purpose was severely tried by the delay of years in raising the necessary funds. When at last, under the leadership of Captain Meriwether Lewis, later of the Lewis and Clark expedition, the explorers were well started on the way, the expedition failed through an order of the French minister recalling the botanist of the expedition, who was a citizen of France. "Thus failed," writes Jefferson again, "the second attempt to explore the Northern Pacific region." Jefferson's interest in the exploration of the Northwest did not die with the failure of this second attempt. Delay in raising the necessary funds for the expedition had brought the setting out of the explorers down to the eve of an event that placed Jefferson in a position to further such an enterprise to a successful issue, and of another event which was to furnish a new motive to its undertaking. Early in the year 1801, when Jefferson had but just taken his seat as President, Rufus King, Minister of the United States to England, wrote to Madison, Secretary of State, that the opinion at that time prevailed both at Paris and at London that Spain had ceded Louisiana and the Floridas to France. Immediately on receipt of this information Madison wrote to Pinckney, American Minister to Spain, advising him of the rumor, and of the President's urgent wish that he make the whole subject the object of early and vigilant inquiries. Instructions to the same effect were given later to Robert R. Livingston on his departure as Minister to France. After more than a year of persistent inquiry on the part of both ministers it was ascertained that Louisiana had been transferred to France, and that the transfer probably included the Floridas. Uncertainty on the latter point, as we now know, arose from the uncertainty of the governments of France and Spain as to the limits of Louisiana. Meanwhile the government at Washington pressed its ministers at both courts to use every effort to secure to the United States the Floridas and New Orleans, with the Mississippi as our western boundary, and the free navigation of the river to its mouth. Events of the latter