Even in the 19th century, the United States Congress moved slowly. In 1828, President John Quincy Adams asked Congress to fund a United States scientific circumnavigation of the globe. Congress approved funds eight years later under President Andrew Jackson. Supposedly British Capt. James Cook’s second voyage, covering 37,500 miles from 1772-1775, left little for the Americans to discover. The Americans went anyway. The result was a stronger American claim to the Pacific Northwest.

The leader of the 1838-1842 scientific voyage was a cartographer, Navy Lt. Charles Wilkes. The United States Exploring Expedition’s six ships held 350 men, including botanists, a mineralogist, naturalists, a philologist and a taxidermist.

After exploring regions in the Atlantic, Antarctica and the South Pacifi

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