It was Astor’s idea to beat the Northwest Fur Company to the mouth of the Columbia, and hence command what was supposed to be the rich fur trade of that new and unknown region. He intended to send ships laden with trading supplies to the mouth of the Columbia River, there to take on the cargoes of furs caught by his own men or secured in trade with the Indians. These ships, laden with furs, were to go thence across the Pacific to China, and were to return from China to New York, laden with the products of the Orient, which our old-time historian, Henry Howe, thought must some time come across the American continent by rail. Here, then, was a commercial undertaking of no small dimensions. Mr. Astor attached two strings to his bow. He fitted out one expedition by sea, and one by land, the objective point of each being the mouth of the Columbia River. He relied largely upon men he had known in the fur trade of the Great Lakes for the leadership of his land party, but he made the great mistake of placing three men in practically equal command. Unfortunately, he made another mistake in establishing the leadership of his sea expedition. There was but one leader there, the captain of the ship Tonquin, Thorne by name, a man by no means fitted to command any company of adventurers. The Tonquin left New York September sixth, 1810. It reached the mouth of the Columbia River March twenty-second, 1811. A party was soon thereafter detached for the erection of the proposed post to be known as Astoria. The Tonquin then proceeded northward up the coast. Its commander, domineering, overbearing, not fitted to trade with the Indians, succeeded in exciting the wrath of the Coast Indians. The latter attacked his ship and practically destroyed his crew, one of whom, an unknown fighting man, whose name is lost by reason of events, blew up the ship, killing many savages and destroying all vestige of the encounter. This was about June thirteenth, 1811. As to the land party under its three leaders, we may say that the winter was spent near St. Joseph, Missouri, but on April twenty-first, 1811, about a month after the ship Tonquin had reached the mouth of the Columbia, this land party started out on its long and arduous western journey. By June twelfth they had traveled thirteen hundred and twenty-five miles up the Missouri River, being then in the neighborhood of the Arickaree villages. There they bought horses and started boldly westward, leaving the waterway of the Missouri, the first of the great companies of transcontinental travelers to proceed along the cord of the great bow of the Missouri.