Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/423



 was not until a few years ago that the people of the United States generally began to turn their attention to the development of those vast regions lying in the far west and along the shores of the Pacific Ocean. An occasional adventurer or foreign traveller returned from the Rocky Mountains after a pleasant but wild sojourn among the trappers and Indians, and told his romantic stories to eager listeners. At length, Major Long penetrated their recesses,—Nicollet sought the sources of the Mississippi,—and Frémont not only pushed his way beyond them, but traversed the majestic snow-buried summits of the Sierra Nevada and explored the genial lands lying at their feet in California.

Meanwhile a trade had grown up, midway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, between our western cities and the northern States of Mexico. But this, too, was an intercourse of mingled adventure, romance and commerce. Its objects and results were not generally known or recounted in the gazettes. Its hardy pursuers who were