One Of The Most Noted Of These Is Ashley's
Company, From St. Louis, Who Trap For Themselves, And Drive An
Extensive Trade With The Indians.
The spirit, enterprise, and
hardihood of Ashley are themes of the highest eulogy in the far
West, and his adventures and exploits furnish abundance of
frontier stories.
Another company of one hundred and fifty persons from New York,
formed in 1831, and headed by Captain Bonneville of the United
States army, has pushed its enterprise into tracts before but
little known, and has brought considerable quantities of furs
from the region between the Rocky Mountains and the coasts of
Monterey and Upper California, on the Buenaventura and Timpanogos
rivers.
The fur countries, from the Pacific, east to the Rocky Mountains,
are now occupied (exclusive of private combinations and
individual trappers and traders) by the Russians; and on the
northwest from Behring's Strait to Queen Charlotte's Island, in
north latitude fifty-three degrees, and by the Hudson's Bay
Company thence, south of the Columbia River; while Ashley's
company, and that under Captain Bonneville, take the remainder of
the region to California. Indeed, the whole compass from the
Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean is traversed in every direction.
The mountains and forests, from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of
Mexico, are threaded through every maze, by the hunter. Every
river and tributary stream, from the Columbia to the mouth of the
Rio del Norte, and from the M'Kenzie to the Colorado of the West,
from their head springs to their junction, are searched and
trapped for beaver.
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