t used in all the earlier French and
English maps until the end of the eighteenth century.[15]

[Footnote 15: The term Rocky Mountains was probably first officially
applied by the American expedition, under Lewis and Clarke, sent out
by the United States Government in 1804 to take possession of the
coast of Oregon, but it was used twenty or thirty years earlier by
British explorers of Western Canada.]

On the 12th of January they reached the very foot of the mountains,
the slopes of which they saw were thickly covered with magnificent
forests of pine and fir--forests, that have since suffered to an
appalling extent from annual bush fires, which so far the United
States Government seems unable to check. Here they were to meet with a
bitter disappointment. They were travelling with a very large war
party of the Bow Indians for the purpose, if need be, of attacking and
routing the Shoshones; but a Shoshone camp at the base of the
mountains was found to be deserted, and the Bow Indians jumped to the
conclusion that the Shoshones had turned back through the forest
unseen, and were now making with all speed for the principal war camp
of the Bow Indians, where they would massacre the women and children.
They would listen to no remonstrances from the two Frenchmen, who
perforce had also to travel back, either alone or with the Bow
Indians, in the direction of their war camp, where the idea of a
Shoshone attack was found to be baseless. Eventually, the two La
Verendrye brothers were obliged to make their way to the Missouri
River, and abandon any idea of finding a way to the Western Ocean
across the Rocky Mountains.

The French pioneers had already heard of the Spaniards in California,
and the possibility of getting into touch with them. They had now
discovered, first of all Europeans, the Rocky Mountains--that great
snowy range of North America which extends from Robson Peak on the
eastern borders of British Columbia to Baldy Peak in New Mexico.

Afterwards the La Verendryes directed their attention more to the
opportunities of reaching the Far West through the streams that flowed
into the system of Lake Winnipeg, and in this way discovered, in or
about 1743, the great River Saskatchewan. This river La Verendrye's
sons followed up till they reached the junction between the North and
the South Rivers, and then they probably learnt a good deal more of
the Southern Saskatchewan, on which they may have built one or two
posts.