Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 6).djvu/70

encouragement. The whole was intermixed, with short and pithy addresses to their fears, their hopes, or their ambition. Hunt and his party, were at least eighteen days before us. In the distance of three hundred {59} miles we had gained five days on him. By great exertions, we might overtake him at the little Cedar island which was six hundred miles further. We should then be safe. For my part I felt great solicitude to overtake him, for the sake of the society of Mr. Bradbury, a distinguished naturalist with whom I had formed an acquaintance at St. Louis, and who had accompanied Mr. Hunt for the purpose of pursuing his researches in natural history on the Missouri. In the society of this gentleman, I had promised myself much pleasure, as well as instruction; and indeed, this constituted one of the principal motives of my voyage—there was also in the same company, a young gentleman of the name of Nuttal, engaged in similar pursuits—my apprehensions with respect to Mr. Hunt, were not such as Lisa entertained; but, I was well aware that there existed a reciprocal jealousy and distrust. Hunt might suppose, that if Lisa overtook him, he would use his superior skill in the navigation of the river to pass by him, and (from the supposition that Hunt was about to compete with him in the Indian trade) induce the Sioux tribes, through whose territory we had to pass for the {60} distance of six hundred miles, to stop him, and perhaps pillage him. Lisa had strong reasons, on the other hand, to suspect that it was Hunt's intention to prevent us from ascending the river; as well from what has already been mentioned, as from the circumstance of his being accompanied by two traders, Crooks and M'Clelland, who had charged Lisa with being the cause of their detention by the Sioux, two years before; in consequence of which they had experienced considerable losses. The quarrel which took place between these two