He saw every creditor and paid every
dollar. Upon his return, Colonel Boone had just one half dollar in his
pocket. But he said triumphantly to his friends who eagerly gathered
around him:

"Now I am ready and willing to die. I am relieved from a burden which
has long oppressed me. I have paid all my debts, and no one will say
when I am gone, 'Boone was a dishonest man.' I am perfectly willing to
die."

In the year 1803, the territory west of the Mississippi came into the
possession of the United States. The whole region, embracing what is now
Missouri, was then called the territory of Louisiana. Soon after this a
commission was appointed, consisting of three able and impartial men, to
investigate the validity of the claims to land granted by the action of
the Spanish Government. Again poor Boone was caught in the meshes of the
law. It was found that he had not occupied the land which had been
granted him, that he had not gone to New Orleans to perfect his title,
and that his claim was utterly worthless.

"Poor Boone! Seventy-four years old, and the second grasp you have made
upon the West has been powerless. You have risked life, and lost the
life next dearest your own for the West. In all its fearful forms, death
has looked you in the face, and you have moved on to conquer the soil
which you did but conquer, that it might be denied to you. You have been
the architect of the prosperity of others, but your own crumbles each
time as you are about to occupy it. When he lost his farm in
Boonesborough, he did not linger around in complainings, but went
quietly away, returning only to fulfil the obligations he had incurred.
And now this last decision came, even at old age, to leave Daniel Boone,
the Pioneer of the West, unable to give a title deed to a solitary
acre."[G]

[Footnote G: Life of Boone, by W. H. Bogart, p. 369.]

The fur trade was at this time very lucrative. Many who were engaged in
it accumulated large fortunes. It was in this traffic that John Jacob
Astor laid the foundations of his immense wealth. A guide of Major Long
stated that he purchased of an Indian one hundred and twenty beaver
skins for two blankets, two gallons of rum, and a pocket mirror. The
skins he took to Montreal, where he sold them for over four hundred
dollars.

In the employment of the fur companies the trappers are of two kinds,
called the "hired hand," and the "free trapper." The former is employed
by the month, receiving regul