360 AMERICAN TRADERS IN CALIFORNIA. [1834. 



fur trade. Meanwhile, a brig, which he had despatched from 

 Boston, with a cargo of goods, arrived at Wappatoo Island, where 

 she, after some further arrangements with the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany, took in a cargo of salted salmon, for the United States. 

 She reached Boston in safety ; but the results of her voyage were 

 not such as to encourage perseverance in the enterprise, which was 

 thereupon abandoned.* 



The American traders, being excluded by these and other means 

 from the Columbia countries, confined themselves almost entirely to 

 the regions about the head-waters of the Colorado and the Utah 

 Lake, where they formed one or two small establishments ; though 

 they sometimes extended their rambles westward to the Sacramento, 

 the Bay of San Francisco, and Monterey, where they were viewed 

 with dislike and mistrust by the Mexican authorities. The number 

 of citizens of the United States thus employed in the country west 

 of the Rocky Mountains seldom, if ever, exceeded two hundred : 

 during the greater part of the year, they roved through the wilds, 

 in search of furs, which they carried, in the summer, to certain 

 places of rendezvous on the Colorado, or on the Lewis, and there 

 disposed of them to the traders from Missouri ; the whole business 

 being conducted by barter, and without the use of money, though 

 each article bore a nominal value, expressed in dollars and cents, 

 very different from that assigned to it in the states of the Union.f 



About the time of Wyeth's expeditions also took place the ear- 

 liest emigrations from the United States to the territories of the 

 Columbia, for the purpose of settlement, and without any special 

 commercial objects. 



The first of these colonies was founded, in 1834, in the valley of 



* Captain Wyeth's expeditions, though unprofitable to himself, have been rendered 

 advantageous to the world at large ; for his short memoir on the regions which he 

 visited, printed with the report of the committee of the House of Representatives on 

 the Oregon territory, in February, 1839, affords more exact and useful information, as 

 to their general geography, climate, soil, and agricultural and commercial capabilities, 

 than any other work yet published. Wyeth's movements are also related incidentally 

 in the account of Bonneville's adventures, and in the interesting Narrative of a Jour- 

 ney across the Rocky Mountains, &c, by J. K. Townsend, a naturalist of Philadelphia, 

 published in 1839. 



t Thus, among the prices current at the rendezvous on Green River, in the 

 summer of 1838, we find whisky at three dollars per pint, gunpowder at six dollars 

 per pint, tobacco at five dollars per pound, dogs (for food) at fifteen dollars each, &c. 

 Twenty dollars were frequently expended in rum and sugar, for a night's carouse, by 

 two or three traders, after the conclusion of a bargain. Under such circumstances, 

 it may be supposed that the price of beaver and muskrat skins was proportionally 

 raised ; and that a package, purchased for a hundred dollars on Green River, may have 

 been afterwards sold with profit at St. Louis for twenty. 



