The next year Gist acted as guide to George Washington when he went as emissary from the governor of Virginia to the French fort at the head of the Ohio to protest against the French occupation of the valley. His mission was fruit less, but he brought back a map of his route: up the Potomac, across the divide and along the Monongahela and Allegeny to the French fort near Lake Erie.
A most prominent figure in English explora tion was George Croghan. Sent out by Penn sylvania in 1750 with the half-breed Montour to win over the Indians through the Ohio Valley to the English, he went far and wide, from tribe to tribe, attaining an influence over the Indians which was of invaluable service to the English during the French and Indian War. When peace was declared he was delegated to prepare the Indians for English occupation. Starting from Pittsburgh, he followed the Ohio, Wabash and Maumee to Detroit and reported that the way was open; whereupon the English troops, under Capt. Thomas Stirling, advanced to Fort Chartres and took possession of the country east of the Mississippi.
And now, with English control assured, set tlement spread rapidly beyond the Appalachians. Much of the preliminary exploration was made by hunters, trappers and traders too numerous to mention, were they known. North of the Ohto the country was first settled by Moravian missionaries. Among the southern pioneers, James Smith followed the Kentucky and Ten nessee rivers in 1766 and John Finlay explored northern Kentucky in 1767; but most prominent was Daniel Boone. His first venture was made in 1769, when he crossed the Cumberland Gap with James Robertson and spent two years ex ploring eastei-n Kentucky and Tennessee. Sub sequently these two men took a prominent part in the settlement of this region.
With the advent of the American Revolution exploration received a check ; but the expeditions of troops led by George Rodgers Clark into the Ohio Basin 1778-79 and by Gen. John Sullivan into western New York were not without geo graphical value. And in the Indian wars which followed (1790-94) the American expeditions under Harmar, Clark, St. Clair and Wayne added to lcnowledge of the Ohio Valley.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, while ex ploration and settlement had been pushed west ward from the Atlantic seaboard over halfway across the continent, the Pacific coast was al most unknown. Balboa had discovered the Pacific at the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and Cortes had sent several expeditions to the west coast of Mexico (1522-24). The first white man to reach the coast of California was the Spaniard Juan Cabrillo, who in 1542 traced it north as far as Monterey; and after his death the following year his pilot continued to Cape Mendocino. In 1576 the English seaman Drake reached lat. 43° in his coastal exploration. To the north the coast was unknown until Vitus Bering (1741), commanding a Russian expedi tion, visited it in lat. 60°. His voyage was followed by a swarm of Russian fur-traders, who, following the chain of Aleutian Islands during the latter part of the 18th century, grad ually worked their way eastward and event ually reached the mainland of what is now Alaska.
In 1778 came Capt. James Cook, the famous English navigator, surveying the coast f rom Vancouver Island to the Arctic Ocean in his search for a northeast passage. When the pub lished account of this voyage called attention to the rich fur-trade in the northwest, Americans were among the first to take advantage of it In 1789 Capt. Robert Gray, of Boston, in the ship Columbia, cruised around the Horn and visited the northwest coast, carried a cargo of furs to China and returned to Boston by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Thus was the American flag first carried around the world. On a second voyage in 1792 he discovered and explored the lower reaches of the Columbia River. This all-important achievement, besides disclosing an easy route from the western mountains to the sea— thus paving the way for transcontinental exploration — formed the chief basis of our territorial claim to Oregon. When George Vancouver, who was exploring the west coast with two British vessels (1792), learned of the Columbia River through Gray, he sent a boat expedition to investigate it. Afterward he continued northward to extend Cook's ex plorations on the coast of Alaska and British Columbia.