in 1809, Astor would dispatch his first ship, the Enterprise, to test the profitability of his transglobal trading scheme with a quick stop at the Northwest Coast. The following year, in 1810, he would send two advance parties—one around Cape Horn by sea on the Tonquin and one across America by land. The Overland Party would begin to lay out a vast network of fur posts reaching up the Missouri River, over the Rockies, and to the Pacific Ocean, and open a “line of communication” across the continent along which both messages and furs could travel.
