Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 21).djvu/17

1832-1834] was to start around Cape Horn, to meet the overland adventurers at the mouth of the Columbia. Wyeth, meanwhile, was to lead a company of hale young men across the continent, who should hunt and trap on the way, and be ready on arrival to provide a cargo of furs for the vessel, and later to develop the products of the Oregon country.

Wyeth's original plan for the land party included forty companions, but he finally set forth from Baltimore with an enrollment of but twenty-four. Arrived in St. Louis, he learned for the first time of the vast operations that Western fur-traders were already carrying on among the mountains—men to whom the experience of a life-time had taught the conditions and the methods of trade beyond the frontier. Nothing daunted, however, young Wyeth joined the yearly caravan of the Rocky Mountains Fur Company, and under its protection proceeded to that company's rendezvous at Pierre's Hole. There the majority of his men, finding the hazard greater than they had anticipated, turned back; but the leader, with a handful of followers, pressed on, only to learn in the Oregon country that his vessel had been wrecked on a Pacific reef, and his cargo of supplies lost.

Received at Fort Vancouver with hospitable courtesy on the part of the Hudson's Bay people, Wyeth passed the winter exploring the region and learning its resources. He became more than ever eager to exploit the great possibilities lying before him, and returned across the continent to Boston, making en route the famous journey—commemorated by Washington Irving in his Scenes in the Rocky Mountains—down the Bighorn and Yellowstone in a bull-boat. While still among the mountain men, Wyeth confidently entered into a contract with Milton Sublette and the latter's partner, Thomas Fitzpatrick, to carry out to them their yearly supplies the following season.

Intent on this and other projects, our adventurer hastened