The mines of Montana and Idaho, which had attracted notice and emigration in the early sixties, were still the objective points of a large traffic. They were somewhat off the beaten routes, being accessible by the Missouri River and Fort Benton, or by the Platte trail and a northern branch from near Fort Hall to Virginia City. To bring them into more direct connection with the East an available route from Fort Laramie was undertaken in 1865. The new trail left the main road near Fort Laramie, crossed to the north side of the Platte, and ran off to the northwest. Shortly after leaving the Platte the road got into the charming foothill country where the slopes "are all covered with a fine growth of grass, and in every valley there is either a rushing stream or some quiet babbling brook of pure, clear snow-water filled with trout, the banks lined with trees--wild cherry, quaking asp, some birch, willow, and cottonwood." To the left, and not far distant, were the Big Horn Mountains. To the right could sometimes be seen in the distance the shadowy billows of the Black Hills. Running to the north and draining the valley were the Powder and Tongue rivers, both tributaries of the Yellowstone. Here were water, timber, and forage, coal and oil and game. It was the garden spot of the Indians, "the very heart of their hunting-grounds." In a single day's ride were seen "bear, buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, rabbits, and sage-hens." With little exaggeration it was described as a "natural source of recuperation and supply to moving, hunting, and roving bands of all tribes, and their lodge trails cross it in great numbers from north to south." Through this land, keeping east of the Big Horn Mountains and running around their northern end into the Yellowstone Valley, was to run the new Powder River road to Montana. The Sioux treaties were to have their severest testing in the selection of choice hunting-grounds for an emigrant road, for it was one of the certainties in the opening of new roads that game vanished in the face of emigration. While the commissioners were negotiating their treaty at Fort Sully, the first Powder River expedition, in its attempt to open this new road by the short and direct route from Fort Laramie to Bozeman and the Montana mines, was undoing their work. In the summer of 1865 General Patrick E. Connor, with a miscellaneous force of 1600, including a detachment of ex-Confederate troops who had enlisted in the United States army to fight Indians, started from Fort Laramie for the mouth of the Rosebuds on the Yellowstone, by way of the Powder River. Old Jim Bridger, the incarnation of this country, led them, swearing mightily at "these damn paper-collar soldiers," who knew so little of the Indians. There was plenty of fighting as Connor pushed into the Yellowstone, but he was relieved from command in September and the troops were drawn back, so that there were no definitive results of the expedition of 1865.