But Astor thought in continental terms.

He had watched the Lewis and Clark expedition return with its account of the Pacific Northwest, and he had grasped the commercial implications immediately.

The Pacific Northwest offered sea otters.

Sea otters, in the early nineteenth century, were one of the most valuable luxury goods in the world.

Their pelts were extraordinarily thick and soft, and the Chinese market — which Astor understood better than almost any other American businessman of his era — valued them at prices that made the trade enormously profitable.

The strategy was elegant: establish a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River, collect furs from the interior, ship them to China, buy Chinese goods with the proceeds, sell those goods in Europe, and use the European profits to fund the next cycle.