Another rendezvous was held for the summer of 1836, again on Horse Creek tributary of Green River. Fitzpatrick and Fontenelle arrived with the supply caravan on July 3. With them were the missionaries Marcus Whitman and H. H. Spalding, accompanied by their wives, the first white women ever to attend a rendezvous of the mountain men and doubtless the first to come within 100 miles of the future Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks. At this meeting Major Joshua Pilcher, as agent for the American Fur Company, formally and legally took over the interests of Bridger, Fitzpatrick, and Fontenelle, thus consolidating the monopoly. The missionaries, accompanied by Hudson’s Bay Company agents, followed the Bear River route westward. The fur trappers were left in the mountains with Drips, Fontenelle, and Bridger. Says Osborne Russell: Mr. Bridger’s party, as usual, was destined for the Blackfoot country. It contained most of the American trappers and amounted to sixty men. I started with a party of fifteen trappers and two camp keepers, ordered by Mr. Bridger to proceed to the Yellowstone Lake and there await his arrival with the rest of the party. Russell entered Jackson’s Hole by way of the upper Green and Gros Ventre rivers, followed the Snake River north to Jackson Lake, and on August 7 started up Buffalo Fork, to reach Two Ocean Pass. On August 13, he camped at the inlet of Yellowstone Lake, and on the 16th “Mr. Bridger came up with the remainder of the party.” They followed along the eastern shore of the lake to its outlet at present Fishing Bridge, and camped again “in a beautiful plain which extended along the northern extremity of the lake.” Russell describes the lake as “about 100 miles in circumference ... lying in an oblong form south to north, or rather in the shape of a crescent.” His further description of the boiling springs, hot steam vents, and the hollow limestone crustation “of dazzling whiteness,” apparently in Hayden Valley, ranks him with Potts and Ferris as a pioneer journalist of the Park phenomena. [Illustration: Section of Father De Smet “map of the Indian country” of 1851, reflecting data given by Jim Bridger. From the Cartographic Section, National Archives.]