As Mr. Hunt Met With Much Opposition On The Part Of Rival
Traders, Especially The Missouri Fur Company, It Took Him Some
Weeks To Complete His Preparations.
The delays which he had
previously experienced at Montreal, Mackinaw, and on the way,
added to those at St. Louis, had thrown him much behind his
original calculations, so that it would be impossible to effect
his voyage up the Missouri in the present year.
This river,
flowing from high and cold latitudes, and through wide and open
plains, exposed to chilling blasts, freezes early. The winter may
be dated from the first of November; there was every prospect,
therefore, that it would be closed with ice long before Mr. Hunt
could reach its upper waters. To avoid, however, the expense of
wintering at St. Louis, he determined to push up the river as far
as possible, to some point above the settlements, where game was
plenty, and where his whole party could be subsisted by hunting,
until the breaking up of the ice in the spring should permit them
to resume their voyage.
Accordingly on the twenty-first of October he took his departure
from St. Louis. His party was distributed in three boats. One was
the barge which he had brought from Mackinaw; another was of a
larger size, such as was formerly used in navigating the Mohawk
River, and known by the generic name of the Schenectady barge;
the other was a large keel boat, at that time the grand
conveyance on the Mississippi.
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