McKenzie set up a whiskey still at Fort Union, to get ahead of the inspectors. Ramsay Crooks, who had long been prominent in the American Fur Company, opposed the scheme, fearing trouble with the Government, and he was right, but it was put in operation. Wyeth and Cerré, passing Fort Union, learned of it and reported to the Government, and William Clark, of Lewis and Clark, who was still superintendent for the Western tribes, was instructed to stop it. The matter was finally allowed to pass without punishment, but it came near bringing the American Fur Company to disaster. The persistence with which the respectable fur companies forced whiskey into the Wilderness and debauched the tribes there, in spite of every effort of the Government to prevent it, is a permanent disgrace to these companies and to their managers, every one of whom, from chief down, knew that the wealth they were accumulating by it was largely a swindle, and meant the impoverishment and wrecking of the people of the Wilderness. It was bad enough to charge the poor natives outrageous prices for cheap articles, but deliberately to intoxicate them for profit can never be considered anything but dishonour for every man, high and low, who permitted it to go on without hindrance or protest, or who abetted it, and received the money from such base sources. Famous travellers now went for a turn in the Wilderness, though most of them contented themselves with the part east of the Rocky Mountains. Among these was Washington Irving, in 1832, with several congenial spirits, one of whom was Charles Latrobe, an Englishman, who wrote an interesting book. This adventure of Irving was of value afterwards when he came to write _Astoria_ and _Bonneville_, albeit it was brief. He saw the buffalo, however, and, as described, experienced the excitement of the chase. Francis Parkman, at a later time, followed Irving's example, and then gathered notes for his _Oregon Trail_. Various American and English sportsmen also sought this fascinating field, but this volume is too small to record the doings of the great numbers who now began to swarm into the Wilderness. Many of them have written valuable books which may be found in all good libraries.[100]