CORRESP ONDENCE. 



493 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



EARLY TRANSCONTINENTAL EXPLORA- 

 TIONS. ^ 



To the Editor of the Popular Science Monthly. 



SIR : Judge Daly's address to the Amer- 

 ican Geographical Society, in the May 

 number of The Popular Science Monthly, 

 it appears to me, might lead the reader to 

 infer that little was known, before General 

 Fremont's journey, of our country between 

 the Mississippi and Pacific. And a like 

 opinion seems to have been entertained 

 when he was a candidate for President, for 

 it was then said that he was the discoverer 

 of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains ; 

 whereas it had been long known and used 

 by explorers before 1832, ten years before 

 his journey, when I passed that way to 

 OregOD, some account of which can be seen 

 in a letter from me to Prof. Amos Eaton, of 

 Troy, published in Sillimari's Journal in 

 1833 or 1834, and a communication from 

 myself to the same in 1835. But, as this 

 may look a little egotistical, I will speak of 

 those who traversed those regions earlier, 

 but by no means to detract from the de- 

 served honor due to those later explorers 

 named by the judge in his address, one of 

 whom, Lieutenant Gunnison, I knew well, 

 as this place was for a time his home, as it 

 is still of his family ; and as they were the 

 first to explore the wide country from the 

 Mississippi to the Pacific, Lewis and Clark, 

 and their companions, should be the first 

 mentioned, for, till their exploration, it was 

 indeed a terra incognita. Sent out by the 

 Government in 1806, after its purchase as a 

 part of Louisiana, it took them more than 

 two years to perform the journey, crossing 

 the mountains by very difficult routes, the 

 more feasible ones, the South Pass and 

 others, being of after-discovery. Well do 

 I recollect in my childhood hearing one of 

 their number, a Mr. Ordway, describe their 

 journey, and how the bad Indians followed 

 them for a number of days to restore some 

 articles they had accidentally left. Lewis 

 and Clark's journey was before the day of 

 what is called the modern sciences, for to 



them, geologically, the grand basaltic col- 

 umns on the Columbia were " high black 

 rocks." Then, in 1810, came Mr. Astor's 

 grand enterprise of establishing the fur- 

 business on the Columbia. He not only 

 sent a vessel round by sea with men and 

 supplies, but sent a party, headed by Mr. 

 Ramsay Crooks, across the country to meet 

 them. He met so many obstacles, especial- 

 ly among the mountains and canons along 

 the lower Lewis River, that he did not reach 

 Astoria till the second year. The next 

 year, to bring an express from there to Mr. 

 Astor, a Mr. Robert Stewart, late of Detroit, 

 crossed the mountains and plains with only 

 half a dozen men. But' Astor was cut 

 short in his business in Oregon, for in 1812 

 a party of the British Northwestern Com- 

 pany crossed the mountains and descended 

 the Columbia, carrying the news to Astoria 

 of the war, and that a war-ship was on the 

 way to take their fort. So Astor's agents 

 there sold out to them his interest, and those 

 British traders, afterward consolidated with 

 and known as the Hudson Bay Company, 

 even after the boundary-line was settled be- 

 yond the mountains, controlled the fur- 

 trade from the Pacific to the Atlantic in 

 British America, and down the coast to 

 California, and knew every corner of it to 

 the Arctic Ocean, wherever the beaver 

 clipped a twig or swam its mountain- 

 streams. General Ashley, and other Amer- 

 ican fur-traders, early also carried the 

 trade to the mountains, and became as well 

 acquainted with them on our side, if we 

 except that wondrous canon-region lately so 

 ably explored by Powell and others. Mr. 

 Sublelle, with whom and his trappers we in 

 1832 traveled, had then made his seventh 

 annual journey to the mountains, and we 

 left the State of Missouri on the deep-worn 

 Santa Fe trail, over which trade was car- 

 ried on to that place ; leaving which, and 

 crossing the Kansas River, between that and 

 the Platte we overtook Major Bonneville, 

 traveling with wagons to the mountains, 

 where he passed the winter, and of whom, 



