Page:Memoirs of a Huguenot Family.djvu/399

The scheme might have been formed in Great Britain, and was this. Some persons were to be sent in search of that river Missouri, if that be the right name of it, in order to discover whether it had any such communication with the Pacific Ocean: they were to follow that river if they found it, and make exact reports of the country they passed through, the distance they travelled, what sort of navigation those rivers and lakes afforded, &c., &c. And this project was so near being reduced into practice, that a worthy friend and neighbor of mine, who has been extremely useful to the Colony in the many discoveries he has made to the westward, was appointed to be the chief conductor of the whole affair, had, by order of their Honors, drawn up a list of all the necessary implements and apparatus for such an attempt, and an estimate of the expense, and was upon the point of making all proper preparations for setting out. when a sudden stop was put to the further prosecution of the scheme for the present, by a commencement of hostilities between this Colony and the French and their Indians, which rendered a passage through the interjacent nations with whom they are ever tampering, too hazardous to be attempted. This, I must observe to you, still remains a secret; and to prevent its discovery to the enemy, in case the ship I write by should be taken, the person to whom I have recommended this packet has instructions to throw it overboard in time. However, you are at liberty to impart it to my uncle John, or to any other friend, of whose retentive faculty you can be as confident as I can be of yours. But to return once more. As there is such short and easy communication by means of canoe navigation, and some short portages between stream and stream, from the Potomac, from Hudson's River in New-York, and from the St. Lawrence to the Ohio,