i, the
former had reached a safe footing along a narrow pass, when he heard a
voice shout, "Good God, captain, what shall I do?" Turning, Lewis saw
Windsor had slipped to the verge of a precipice, where he lay with right
arm and leg over it, the other arm clinging for dear life to the bluff.
With his hunting-knife he cut a hole for his right foot, ripped off his
moccasins so that his toes could have the prehensile freedom of a
monkey's tail, and thus crawled to safety like a fly on a wall.]

[Footnote 3: Whether they actually reached the shores of the bay on this
trip is still a dispute among French-Canadian savants.]

[Footnote 4: 1685-'87; the same Le Moyne d'Iberville who died in Havana
after spending his strength trying to colonize the Mississippi for
France--one instance which shows how completely the influence of the fur
trade connected every part of America, from the Gulf to the pole, as in
a network irrespective of flag.]

[Footnote 5: The men employed in mere rafting and barge work in
contradistinction to the trappers and _voyageurs_.]

[Footnote 6: This was probably the real motive of the Hudson's Bay
Company sending Hearne to explore the Coppermine in 1769-'71. Hearne,
unfortunately, has never reaped the glory for this, owing to his
too-ready surrender of Prince of Wales Fort to the French in La
Perouse's campaign of 1782.]

[Footnote 7: To the mouth of the MacKenzie River in 1789, across the
Rockies in 1793, for which feats he was knighted.]

CHAPTER II

THREE COMPANIES IN CONFLICT

If only one company had attempted to take possession of the vast fur
country west of the Mississippi, the fur trade would not have become
international history; but three companies were at strife for possession
of territory richer than Spanish Eldorado, albeit the coin was
"beaver"--not gold. Each of three companies was determined to use all
means fair or foul to exclude its rivals from the field; and a fourth
company was drawn into the strife because the conflict menaced its own
existence.

From their Canadian headquarters at Fort William on Lake Superior, the
Nor' Westers had yearly moved farther down the Columbia towards the
mouth, where Lewis and Clark had wintered on the Pacific. In New York,
Mr. Astor was formulating schemes to add to his fur empire the territory
west of the Mississippi. At St. Louis was Manuel Lisa, the Spanish fur
trader, already reaching out for the furs of the Missouri. And leagues
t