Vast Extent of North America-Extensive Emigration from Europe-The Mormons and their Progress-The Rocky Mountains-Jacob Astor-His Early Life-His Progress in America-Great Scheme of Colonisation and Commerce -The Fur Trade-The Various Great Companies-Details of Mr. Astor's Plan.

IF any ten persons of ordinary education were desired to indicate on

a map of the world the part whose manifold natural resources have been least developed by the industry of man, nine out of the ten would

probably point to the great North American continent. And in this case the verdict of the majority would be the true one. The stream of emigration has, indeed, for a long time been flowing towards the West, deepening and widening year by year, and absorbing in its current men from all parts of the Old World, and especially from Europe. Peasants from the Black Forest have floated their frail boats of fir-planks down the Neckar and the Rhine, to embark on the broad ocean, and carry their labour to a region where, as one of their own poets has said, "He who ploughs the land shall reap." Political fugitives hurrying from the dangerous lands of despotism, artisans in quest of a new market for their various crafts, enterprising and speculative traders and merchants, have sought "fresh fields and pastures new" in the regions of the Far West. Not the least among the reasons that have contributed to people the Western wilds, and raise cities as if by enchantment in regions where the bear and the buffalo had roamed in undisputed sovereignty, has been the rise and progress of that wonderful sect the Mormons, who, uniting to a strange and ludicrous fanaticism a remarkable amount of perseverance and courage, have formed and consolidated an empire on the shores around the Great Salt Lake. In spite of all this various activity, millions of acres that might laugh with harvests still lie unclaimed and untouched by the hand of man, lonely and deserted, save for the occasional passage through them of some trading caravan, or some party of painted Indians on the war-trail or on a hunting expedition. The vast extent of the country, the various barriers interposed by ranges of mountains, and still more effectually by desert plains, the rigour of the climate in some parts, and the absence of means of communication in others, long prevented the regions around the Rocky Mountains from being included in the regular track of emigration. But already these barriers are disappearing before the magic of science. The iron road is forcing its way through hitherto deserted tracts, superseding the heavy waggon that painfully creaked across the boundless prairies; already the great republic has stretched forth its arm to the Pacific, and included within its jurisdiction all the land to distant San Francisco.

The discovery, made some twenty years ago, that gold existed in large quantities in California, has resulted in planting many a thriving community in spots which might otherwise have been left for many years to wandering herds of buffaloes, solitary grisly bears, and tribes

of "Redskins" equally solitary and nomadic; and it may truly be said that an amount of colonisation and progress which would require centuries for its achievement under ordinary circumstances, has been accomplished in the "Far West" within fifty years.

Our readers will do well to bear these facts in mind if they would form a just estimate of the condition of the western and north-western portion of the great North American continent at the beginning of the present century. No gold-fields had yet been discovered; no farms had been established in the fruitful spots by the banks of great rivers, to be the nuclei of thriving villages and towns; the Rocky Mountains had indeed been crossed by explorers, but no idea yet existed of establishing a regular route. It was at this period, when Western North America was indeed a wilderness, pathless, deserted, and in a great measure unexplored, that a scheme of colonisation and trade remarkable alike for the boldness of its conception, the originality of its plan, the soundness of the views on which it was founded, and the extensive range of its operations, was conceived and executed through the energy and perseverance of one man. This scheme was the foundation of a settlement on the Pacific, at the mouth of the Columbia river, and it was originated and accomplished under the auspices of John Jacob Astor.

This remarkable man, who by his own exertions throughout a long life of industry and probity, gained for himself a foremost place among the merchant princes of the world, was born of poor parents, in the little town of Walldorf, near Heidelberg, in Germany, on the 17th of July, 1763. His father carried on the trade of a butcher in the place, and John Jacob was the last of four sons of a first marriage. On the death of his wife, the elder Astor took to himself a second helpmate; and this new marriage, which produced a second family, seems to have lessened the comfort and narrowed the means of subsistence of the elder children. Accordingly, as the Astor lads grew up, they began to turn their thoughts to the remedy which seems naturally to suggest itself to the imagination of the German peasant, when pinched by poverty or roused by tyranny into anger. The youths emigrated one after another; and in due time John Jacob, or "Nobbele," as he was called at home, strapped his knapsack on his shoulders, took staff in hand, and stepped into the little market boat that was to carry him down the Neckar and the Rhine to the port of embarkation—whence he hoped first to reach England, and ultimately America, the "land