His two sons, Pierre and François, meanwhile, had done their best to carry on his work. They pushed on to the West, visiting one tribe after another who had never seen a white man before, and came at last to an encampment of the Bow Indians. Now the Bows were just sending a war party out against a tribe still farther West, so the Frenchmen went on with them, over the high plateau of Montana, and at last, one day early in 1743, as they travelled they saw rising above the horizon a beautiful range of snowy peaks. They had discovered the Rocky Mountains. If they could only climb that range, they thought, they would see the long-sought ocean spreading out below their feet on the other side. The Indians, however, flatly refused to go on. Not finding the tribe they had come to fight, the Bows hurried back home, fearing the enemy would get there ahead of them; and the disappointed brothers had to go with the rest. The bravery and dogged perseverance of Vérendrye and his sons had thrown open a new world, the prairie and woodland of the West; and their fellow-countrymen pressed in to reap the profits of its trade. While the English Company’s officers sat waiting for the Indians to bring their furs down to the Bay, the French traders pressed farther and farther west and north, buying up the furs themselves. The Indians living far inland, though eager for the white man’s wonderful wares, did not like making the long journey to the Bay. Sometimes they nearly starved before they got there; sometimes they were kept at home by fear of attack from hostile tribes. The first white man who ventured inland from the Bay and tried to overcome their hesitation did so without orders. Henry Kellsey was just a lad who had made particular friends of Indians around Port Nelson. The Governor did not like this, and punished him. Henry ran off, joined a party of Indians, and after a year or so came back with an Indian wife. He was forgiven, and the Company was glad to employ him after that, “to call, encourage and invite the remoter Indians to a trade with us.” Half a century later, another adventurous young Englishman, named Anthony Hendry, was sent off on the same errand; and he was the first white man to explore the great plain between the North and South Saskatchewan. There for the first time Indians were discovered hunting buffalo on horseback, near the Red Deer River, and Anthony hunted with them. These were the Blackfeet. They used pads of buffalo skin for saddles, with stirrups of the same leather. When he had smoked the pipe of peace, Hendry asked the Chief to send his young men down to the Bay, promising guns, ammunition, “and everything else they desire,” in return for beaver and wolf skins. But the chief said his men could neither paddle canoes nor live on fish; they could only travel on horseback, and needed buffalo meat. Besides, they did not want guns—bows and arrows were all they needed. It was not very long before they changed their minds.