Another company of one hundred and fifty persons from New York, formed
in 1831, and headed by Captain Bonneville of the United States army,
has pushed its enterprise into tracts before but little known, and has
brought considerable quantities of furs from the region between the
Rocky Mountains and the coasts of Monterey and Upper California, on the
Buenaventura and Timpanogos rivers.
The fur countries, from the Pacific, east to the Rocky Mountains, are
now occupied (exclusive of private combinations and individual trappers
and traders) by the Russians; and on the northwest from Behring's Strait
to Queen Charlotte's Island, in north latitude fifty-three degrees, and
by the Hudson's Bay Company thence, south of the Columbia River; while
Ashley's company, and that under Captain Bonneville, take the remainder
of the region to California. Indeed, the whole compass from the
Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean is traversed in every direction. The
mountains and forests, from the Arctic Sea to the Gulf of Mexico, are
threaded through every maze, by the hunter. Every river and tributary
stream, from the Columbia to the mouth of the Rio del Norte, and from
the M'Kenzie to the Colorado of the West, from their head springs to
their junction, are searched and trapped for beaver.
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