Tue Last YEARS 155

out that Lewis and Clark’s expedition made
action urgent, though his own journey gave
the British the rights of prior discovery. This
memorial suffered the fate of most applica-
tions to governments: for three years it wan-
dered from department to department, and
finally came to rest in some dusty pigeon-
hole.

In 1811 the request for a charter was
renewed with vigour by the Company itself,
with Mackenzie as one of several signatories.
The ideas were certainly his, and probably a
trip to Montreal in 1810 had been undertaken
in connection with it. The application asked
for the grant of “the sole and exclusive trade
and commerce” of the Pacific coast and the
basin of the Mackenzie River, urging the
great services to the British Crown already
performed by the Company, and pointing out
that trade on the coast required so much
capital, and was attended with such risk,
that a monopoly was a fair reward for enter-
prise in that quarter. The demand, indeed,
was far from unreasonable. Astor’s company
was established at the mouth of the Columbia