great encouragement
to settlers. They are extremely jealous, however, of any interference
or participation in their trade, and monopolize it from the coast of the
Pacific to the mountains, and for a considerable extent north and south.
The American traders and trappers who venture across the mountains,
instead of enjoying the participation in the trade of the river and its
tributaries, that had been stipulated by treaty, are obliged to keep to
the south, out of the track of the Hudson's Bay parties.

Mr. Astor has withdrawn entirely from the American Fur Company, as he
has, in fact, from active business of every kind. That company is
now headed by Mr. Ramsay Crooks; its principal establishment is at
Michilimackinac, and it receives its furs from the posts depending on
that station, and from those on the Mississippi, Missouri, and Yellow
Stone Rivers, and the great range of country extending thence to the
Rocky Mountains. This company has steamboats in its employ, with which
it ascends the rivers, and penetrates to a vast distance into the
bosom of those regions formerly so painfully explored in keel-boats
and barges, or by weary parties on horseback and on foot. The first
irruption of steamboats in the heart of these vast wildernesses is said
to have caused the utmost astonishment and affright among their savage
inhabitants.

In addition to the main companies already mentioned, minor associations
have been formed, which push their way in the most intrepid manner to
the remote parts of the far West, and beyond the mountain barriers. One
of the most noted of these is Ashley's company, from St. Louis, who
trap for themselves, and drive an extensive trade with the Indians. The
spirit, enterprise, and hardihood of Ashley are themes of the highest
eulogy in the far West, and his adventures and exploits furnish
abundance of frontier stories.

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 Behr