between the two companies for the trade with the mountain tribes and
the trapping of the head-waters of the Columbia and the other great
tributaries of the Pacific. Beside the regular operations of these
formidable rivals, there have been from time to time desultory
enterprises, or rather experiments, of minor associations, or of
adventurous individuals beside roving bands of independent trappers,
who either hunt for themselves, or engage for a single season, in the
service of one or other of the main companies.

The consequence is that the Rocky Mountains and the ulterior regions,
from the Russian possessions in the north down to the Spanish
settlements of California, have been traversed and ransacked in every
direction by bands of hunters and Indian traders; so that there is
scarcely a mountain pass, or defile, that is not known and threaded in
their restless migrations, nor a nameless stream that is not haunted by
the lonely trapper.

The American fur companies keep no established posts beyond the
mountains. Everything there is regulated by resident partners; that
is to say, partners who reside in the tramontane country, but who move
about from place to place, either with Indian tribes, whose traffic
they wish to monopolize, or with main bodies of their own men, whom they
employ in trading and trapping. In the meantime, they detach bands,
or "brigades" as they are termed, of trappers in various directions,
assigning to each a portion of country as a hunting or trapping ground.
In the months of June and July, when there is an interval between the
hunting seasons, a general rendezvous is held, at some designated place
in the mountains, where the affairs of the past year are settled by the
resident partners, and the plans for the following year arranged.