appeared for a time to check all further enterprise in that direction.
The American traders contented themselves with following up the head
branches of the Missouri, the Yellowstone, and other rivers and streams
on the Atlantic side of the mountains, but forbore to attempt those
great snow-crowned sierras.

One of the first to revive these tramontane expeditions was General
Ashley, of Missouri, a man whose courage and achievements in the
prosecution of his enterprises have rendered him famous in the Far West.
In conjunction with Mr. Henry, already mentioned, he established a post
on the banks of the Yellowstone River in 1822, and in the following year
pushed a resolute band of trappers across the mountains to the banks of
the Green River or Colorado of the West, often known by the Indian name
of the Seeds-ke-dee Agie. This attempt was followed up and sustained by
others, until in 1825 a footing was secured, and a complete system of
trapping organized beyond the mountains.

It is difficult to do justice to the courage, fortitude, and
perseverance of the pioneers of the fur trade, who conducted these
early expeditions, and first broke their way through a wilderness where
everything was calculated to deter and dismay them. They had to traverse
the most dreary and desolate mountains, and barren and trackless wastes,
uninhabited by man, or occasionally infested by predatory and cruel
savages. They knew nothing of the country beyond the verge of their
horizon, and had to gather information as they wandered. They beheld
volcanic plains stretching around them, and ranges of mountains piled
up to the clouds, and glistening with eternal frost: but knew nothing
of their defiles, nor how they were to be penetrated or traversed. They
launched themselves in frail canoes on rivers, without knowing whither
their swift currents would carry them, or what rocks and shoals and