These Men Had Passed Several Years
In The Upper Wilderness.
They had been in the service of the
Missouri Company under Mr. Henry, and had crossed the Rocky
Mountains with him in the preceding year, when driven from his
post on the Missouri by the hostilities of the Blackfeet.
After
crossing the mountains, Mr. Henry had established himself on one
of the head branches of the Columbia River. There they had
remained with him some months, hunting and trapping, until,
having satisfied their wandering propensities, they felt disposed
to return to the families and comfortable homes which they had
left in Kentucky. They had accordingly made their way back across
the mountains, and down the rivers, and were in full career for
St. Louis, when thus suddenly interrupted. The sight of a
powerful party of traders, trappers, hunters, and voyageurs, well
armed and equipped, furnished at all points, in high health and
spirits, and banqueting lustily on the green margin of the river,
was a spectacle equally stimulating to these veteran backwoodsmen
with the glorious array of a campaigning army to an old soldier;
but when they learned the grand scope and extent of the
enterprise in hand, it was irresistible; homes and families and
all the charms of green Kentucky vanished from their thoughts;
they cast loose their canoes to drift down the stream, and
joyfully enlisted in the band of adventurers. They engaged on
similar terms with some of the other hunters. The company was to
fit them out, and keep them supplied with the requisite
equipments and munitions, and they were to yield one half of the
produce of their hunting and trapping.
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