Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/116



eartli Farnham uudertook and safely carried out. He took passage on the ship Pedlar and crossed over to Siberia. On entering Siberia, Farnham crossed the eastern continent to St. Petersburgh, where the American minister to the Rus- sian court presented him to Emperor Alexander as the bold American who had traveled across his empire. The Emperor received him with great kindness and consideration, and sent him on his way to Paris. After great exposures to dan- gers, toils and sufferings, such as no other man voluntarily submitted himself to for his countrymen, he reached New Toi-k, delivered his papers to Astor, ap- prising him of his losses and the ruin at Astoria, and then made his way back to St. Louis, where he was received as one risen from the dead.

INDEPENDENT TRAPPING EXPEDITIONS

But while the American enterprise was thus crushed out west of the Rocky mountains, the hardy pioneers were pushing out from St. Louis, to the east side of the Rocky mountains. In 1823 General William H. Ashley led an expedition across the plains. He met with resistance from the Indians, and lost fourteen men in battle. In 1824 Ashlej^ discovered a southern route through the Rocky mountains, led his expedition to Great Salt Lake, explored the Utah valley, and built a fort. Two years later a six pounder cannon was hauled from the Mis- souri river across the plains and over the mountains, twelve hundred miles to Ashley's Fort. A trail was made; many loaded wagons passed over it, and within three years Ashley's men gathered and shipped back to St. Louis over two hundred thousand dollars worth of furs. Ashley was a native of Virginia, com- menced selling goods and trading in the West before he was eighteen j'-ears of age, and manufactured saltpeter for powder before he went into fur trading in the West. The Indians in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company made war on him, on the upper Missouri, and he gathered an army of border men and drove the Indians, Hudson's Ba3' men and all over into Montana.

Jim Bridger — whose portrait we give on another page — is another St. Louis contribution to the winning of the west by the fur trading route. Bridger was another old Virginia boy, born in 1804. When ten years old, his father and mother having died, the boy began earning a living for himself and sister In- working on a fiat boat. Stories from the wilderness west stirred the lad, and when he was eighteen he joined a party of trappers and took to the Rocky moun- tains, and continued in a wandering, trapping, exploring life for twenty-five years. He discovered Great Salt Lake in 1824 ; the south pass in 1827 ; visited Yellowstone lake and the gej'sers in 1830 ; founded Fort Bridger in 1843 ; opened the overland route by Bridger 's pass to Great Salt Lake; a guide to the United States exploring expedition under General Albert Sidney Johnston in 1857 ; aided G. M. Dodge to locate the line of the Union Pacific Railroad, and acted as guide to the army in the campaign against the Sioux Indians. 1865-6 ; and received honorable burial at his death and a handsome monument over his re- mains in Mount Washington Cemetery by the people of Kansas City. In every respect Bridger was a typical pioneer American, plunging into the depths of the wilderness for the excitement of it, and to gratify a curiosity to see what was in the great beyond. He was the friend of the immigrants to Oregon, and wandered far out of his way to warn them against marauding savages and guide them on