While the Astorians were thus struggling with their difficulties, the land party were working their way across the country to their assistance. At the head of this second expedition was William Hunt, with whom was associated Donald Mackenzie, both men of tact and experience in dealing with the Indians.
The start was made early in July, 1810, from Montreal, which we have visited under so many different auspices, and, on the 22d, Mackinaw, on the junction of Lakes Huron and Michigan, was reached. This town, first an Indian village and then a French trading post, was now the center of a numerous and mixed population. Here traders bound for Lake Superior, for the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Arkansas, or other rivers, met on their way to their several outlying posts. Here they returned laden with the spoils of the far West.
A long halt was made at Mackinaw to collect recruits, who were not easily met with. It was no joke, urged the redskins, to travel with these white men; they wanted you to go through wildernesses full of savage tribes, with whom they would have to fight, and if any of them escaped death at the hands of their fellow-countrymen, it would only be to starve in those desolate tracts on the other side of the Rocky Mountains. Why should our white man be so anxious to reach the Salt Lake (the sea)? or why, if his anxiety was so very great, would he not give his poor brothers their pay in advance, that the squaws and little ones at home might not pine away in hunger?
Not until the 12th August was the actual start made, and even then, instead of being able to strike across country at once for the mouth of the Columbia, the expedition had to make a voyage down the Mississippi to St. Louis, in order to settle certain difficulties, into which we need not enter here, with the numerous rival companies already alluded to. The starting point of so many expeditions was reached in September, and on the 21st November three canoes, bearing the new body of adventurers, embarked on the Missouri. Even now, progress was extremely slow. Hunt was more than once compelled to return to St. Louis to settle disputes with his rivals; and, as the boats crept cautiously along, rumors of a very discouraging character again and again reached the navigators. There was war among the native tribes, and a party of Sioux Indians were awaiting the arrival of the white men in the wilds of Nebraska, intending to massacre them all.
At the mouth of the Nebraska, signs appeared that the rumors of danger from savages were founded on facts. A frame of a skin canoe was found,
