pbound boats which Manuel Lisa and other traders sent out
almost immediately upon the return of the Lewis and Clark expedition.
We should see them struggling up against that tremendous current
before steam was known, driven by their lust for new lands. We may
then understand fully what we have read of the enterprises of the old
American Fur Company, and bring to mind the forgotten names of Campbell
and Sublette, of General Ashley and of Wyeth--names to be followed by
others really of less importance, as those of Bonneville and Fremont.
That there could be farms, that there ever might be homes, in this
strange wild country, was, to these early adventurers, unthinkable.

Then we should picture the millions of buffalo which once covered these
plains and think of the waste and folly of their slaughtering. We should
see the long streams of the Mackinaw boats swimming down the Missouri,
bound for St. Louis, laden with bales of buffalo and beaver peltry,
every pound of which would be worth ten dollars at the capital of the
fur trade; and we should restore to our minds the old pictures of savage
tribesmen, decked in fur-trimmed war-shirts and plumed bonnets, armed
with lance and sinewed bow and bull-neck shield, not forgetting whence
they got their horses and how they got their food.

The great early mid-continental highway, known as the Oregon Trail or
the Overland Trail, was by way of the Missouri up the Platte Valley,
thence across the mountains. We know more of this route because it was
not discontinued, but came steadily more and more into use, for one
reason after another. The fur traders used it, the Forty-Niners used it,
the cattlemen used it in part, the railroads used it; and, lastly, the
settlers and farmers used it most of all.

In physical features the Platte River route was similar to that of the
Arkansas Valley. Each at its eastern extremity, for a few days' travel,
passed over the rolling grass-covered and flower-besprinkled prairies
ere it broke into the high and dry lands of the Plains, with their green
or grey or brown covering of practically flowerless short grasses. But
between the two trails of the Arkansas and the Platte there existed
certain wide differences. At the middle of the nineteenth century the
two trails were quite distinct in personnel, if that word may be used.
The Santa Fe Trail showed Spanish influences; that of the Platte Valley
remained far more nearly American.

Thus far the frontier h