hunt, to receive the supplies for the coming year. Here, also, came
Indian tribes to trade, and bands of free trappers, lone wanderers
in the mountains, to sell their furs and secure supplies. [Footnote:
Irving, Bonneville, chap. i.] The rendezvous was usually some
verdure-clad valley or park set in the midst of snow-capped
mountains, a paradise of game. Such places were Jackson's Hole, at
the foot of the lofty Tetons, Pierre's Hole, not far away, and
Ogden's Hole, near the present site of Ogden, in Utah. Great Salt
Lake was probably first visited by Bridger in 1824, and the next
year a party of Hudson Bay trappers were expelled by Americans who
took possession of their furs. In 1826, Ashley carried a six-pounder
cannon on wheels to Utah Lake for the defense of his post.

A new advance of the American fur-trader was made when Jedediah
Smith succeeded Ashley as the leader in Rocky Mountain trade and
exploration. In 1826 he left the Salt Lake rendezvous with a party
of trappers to learn the secrets of the lands between the Rocky
Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Proceeding to the southwest along
the Virgin River, Smith descended it to the Colorado, and crossed
the desert to San Diego, California. Here, by the intercession of a
Yankee captain then in that port, he obtained supplies from the
Spaniards, and turned to the northwest, traveling parallel to the
coast for some three hundred miles to wintering grounds on the
headwaters of the San Joaquin and the Merced. Leaving most of his
party behind, he crossed the mountains, by a route south of the
Humboldt, and returned to Great Salt Lake.

Almost immediately he set out again for California by the previous
route, and in 1827 reached the San Jose mission. Here he was
arrested by the Spanish authorities and sent under guard to