Their enterprise was projected on a broad and bold plan.

They were to take with them fifty or sixty men, artificers and mariners.
With these they were to make their way up one of the branches of the Missouri, explore the mountains for the source of the Oregon, or River of the West, and sail down that river to its supposed exit, near the Straits of Annian.

Here they were to erect a fort, and build the vessels necessary to carry their discoveries by sea into effect.

Their plan had the sanction of the British government, and grants and other requisites were nearly completed, when the breaking out of the American Revolution once more defeated the undertaking.

** The expedition of Sir Alexander Mackenzie in 1793, across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, which he reached in lat.