Ogden had vowed he would not be doomed to cruise in the wilderness another year. He reached Vancouver in July. On August 24th, he was again at the head of the Oregon brigade, leading off from Walla Walla for the Grande Ronde, a famous valley of the Snake where the buffalo runners gathered to trade with the mountaineers and coastal tribes. There was good pasturage summer and winter. A beautiful stream ran through the meadow and mountains sheltered it from all but the warm west winds. Indian women came here to gather the camas root and set out from the Grande Ronde in spring for the buffalo hunts of the plains. Here, trappers could meet half a dozen tribes in friendly trade and buy the cayuse ponies for the long trips across the mountains to the Missouri, or up the Snake to Great Salt Lake, or across the South Pass to the Platte. Ogden divided his brigade as usual into different parties under McKay and Payette and Sylvaille, scattering his trappers on both sides of the Snake south as far as the bounds of the present State of Utah. Toward the end of September, when in the region of Salmon Falls on the Snake, he was disgusted to encounter a rival party of forty American traders led by a man named Johnson. “My sanguine hopes of beaver are blasted,” he despairingly writes. “I am camped with the Americans. Their trappers are everywhere. They will not part with a single beaver. Kept advancing south. The Americans informed me they meant to keep on my trail right down to the Columbia. We are surrounded by Blackfeet and Snakes bound to the buffalo hunt. I am uneasy. The Snake camp has upward of fifteen hundred warriors and three thousand horses. We are in full view of the Pilot Knobs or Three Tetons where rise the waters of the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Spanish River. The waters of Goddin’s River disappear in this plain, taking a subterraneous route to Snake River. The chief of the Snakes carries an American flag. The headquarters of the Americans are south of Salt Lake (on Green River). December 14th--Another party of six under a leader named Tullock, a decent fellow, has joined us. He told me his Company wished to enter an agreement with the Hudson’s Bay regarding the return and debts of deserters who go from us to them, or from them to us. He says the conduct of Gardner at our meeting four years ago”--when Ogden was robbed--“has not been approved. Our trappers have their goods on moderate terms, but the price we pay them for beaver is low compared to the Americans. The Americans pay $5.00 for beaver large or small. We pay $2.00 for large and $1.00 for small. Here is a wide difference to the free trapper. If he takes his furs to St. Louis, he will get $5.50. Most of the American trappers have the following plan: Goods are sold to them at 150 per cent. advance, but delivered to them here in the Snake country. Not requiring to transport their provisions, they need few horses. For three years, General Ashley has brought supplies