Mountains, scaling or descending the most frightful precipices,
searching, by routes inaccessible to the horse, and never before
trodden by white man, for springs and lakes unknown to his
comrades, and where he may meet with his favorite game. Such is
the mountaineer, the hardy trapper of the West; and such, as we
have slightly sketched it, is the wild, Robin Hood kind of life,
with all its strange and motley populace, now existing in full
vigor among the Rocky Mountains.
Having thus given the reader some idea of the actual state of the
fur trade in the interior of our vast continent, and made him
acquainted with the wild chivalry of the mountains, we will no
longer delay the introduction of Captain Bonneville and his band
into this field of their enterprise, but launch them at once upon
the perilous plains of the Far West.
2.
Departure from Fort Osage Modes of transportation Pack-
horses Wagons Walker and Cerre; their characters Buoyant feelings
on launching upon the prairies Wild equipments of the
trappers Their gambols and antics Difference of character between
the American and French trappers Agency of the Kansas General
Clarke White Plume, the Kansas chief Night scene in a trader's
camp Colloquy between White Plume and the captain Bee-
hunters Their expeditions Their feuds with the Indians Bargaining
talent of White Plume
IT WAS ON THE FIRST of May, 1832, that Captain Bonneville took
his departure from the frontier post of Fort Osage, on the
Missouri.
