CHAPTER VII.
THE EXPLORERS OF THE FAR WEST, 1804-1807.
The Far West.
The Far West, the West beyond the Mississippi, had been thrust on Jefferson, and given to the nation, by the rapid growth of the Old West, the West that lay between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi.

The actual title to the new territory had been acquired by the United States Government, acting for the whole nation.

It remained to explore the territory thus newly added to the national domain.

The Government did not yet know exactly what it had acquired, for the land was not only unmapped but unexplored.

Nobody could tell what were the boundary lines which divided it from British America on the north and Mexico on the south, for nobody knew much of the country through which these lines ran; of most of it, indeed, nobody knew anything.