Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 24.djvu/386

 358 Stella M. Drumm as unconcerned as if navigating securely in the midst of civilization. The acquisition of two such hardy, experienced and dauntless hunters was peculiarly acceptable to Hunt. These two needed but little persuasion to join the outfit. The wilderness is the home of the trapper. Like the sailor, he cares but little to which point of the compass he steers. Jones and Carson willingly abandoned their voyage to St. Louis, and turned their faces towards the Kocky Mountains and the Pacific. Jones served in the capacity of guide as well as hunter, for he was well acquainted with the whole of the country between the Mandans and the Aricaras. Because of his skill and expertness as guide and hunter he was later assigned to the Stuart party on the return expedition. Jones was a Virginian by birth, his father having emigrated from England. The fascinating tales of the frontier induced him to leave his father's home, in Ka- nawha County, when he was about sixteen years of age. Jones was in St. Louis prior to 1802, although he seems to have gone first to Kentucky, for he was referred to by Irving as the "Kentuckian Benjamin Jones.'' His brother Lewis, when very young, also ran away from home and came to St. Louis in 1802. He married Delinda Hayes, a granddaughter of Daniel Boone. When Jones returned to St. Louis in 1813, after an absence of four or five years, he purchased a farm in St. Louis County on the Mississippi river, just below the mouth of the Missouri. It contained 240 arpens. There he pursued the vocation of farmer for a few years, but finally becoming restless, he longed for the freedom and excitement of a hunter's life. Starting off on another ex- pedition, this time to Santa Fe, he remained away for another four years. Returning to St. Louis, Jones removed his family to the neighboring town of Carondelet, and later to a tract of land on Gravois Creek, in the neighborhood of Wilson