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had navigated some portions of them. Since Cabeza de Vaca the Spanish castaway, Monchat Ape the learned savage, Lewis and Clarke, Fraser, Thompson, and the others first to traverse different localities, Ste- phen Long had ascended the southern branch of the Nebraska or Platte river to its source, and an overland trade had sprung up between the United States and Mexico. Ashley had ascended the north branch of the Platte, and had encamped near the head waters of the Colorado.
The year following, 1824, Ashley continued his dis- coveries through the South pass to Great Salt Lake, built a fort in Utah valley and left there a hundred men. In 1826, a six-pounder cannon was drawn from Missouri 1200 miles through the wilderness, and planted within this fort. In 1827, many heavily laden wagons performed the same journey, penetrating far- ther westward ; among others, Mr Pilcher, who with forty-five men and a hundred horses crossed the Rocky Mountains by the South pass, wintered on the Colo- rado, and in the year following proceeded to Fort Colville, then recently established by the Hudson's Bay Company. From these and other points in the Great Basin, hundreds of trappers, traders, and emi- grants crossed the Sierra at the several passes between San Bernardino and Shasta, and descended into the valley of California.
Smith, Jackson, and Sublette, able and enterprising men, continued the explorations of Ashley, and during the years 1828 and 1829, they traversed the whole region between the Columbia river and the Tulare lakes, and down to the borders of the sea. Smith fell a prey to the savages, it will be remembered, in 1829, after having twice crossed the continent to the Pacific ocean. In 1832 J. O. Pattie, a Missourian fur-hunter, published an account of his rambles through New Mexico, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Cali- fornia. He boated up and down the Colorado, crossed Sonora to the gulf of California, and thence to the
