While Lewis and Clark did not add any knowledge of Yellowstone Park to their epic-making report, still it was a member of the party who first viewed its exotic beauty. However, before delineating Colter’s discovery, the picture of the Park’s isolation should be explored further. The first thrust toward the Yellowstone country was made by the French explorer de Verendrye, who came near the northeastern border in 1743 when he crossed the lower Yellowstone River, leaving Wonderland still undiscovered.[19] By 1810, the Missouri Fur Company established posts on the mouths of the Bighorn and at Three Forks of the Missouri. Notwithstanding these locations, there was little penetration of the “top of the world,” as the Crow Indians called the Yellowstone country. Blackfoot Indian hostility forced the abandonment of the post at Three Forks and in the fall of 1810, Major Andrew Henry, one of the partners, led a small party into the Pacific Ocean drainage. They went up the Madison River, thereby skirting the Gallatin Range which bounds the Park on the west. They crossed a low pass and came upon a beautiful lake. Henry’s name was given the lake (Henrys Lake) and also to its outlet (Henrys Fork of the Snake River), which they followed about forty miles below its debouchment into Snake River Valley. In a pleasant spot some four miles below the present St. Anthony Falls they erected Fort Henry, but they did not prosper there and, feeling discouraged and insecure, abandoned that post. In 1811, Henry released his trappers, and while they returned to the east by various routes all of them missed the Yellowstone region.[20] [Illustration: W. S. Chapman Sacajawea with Lewis and Clark.] As Henry’s men circled eastward a much larger expedition was threading its course between the Wind River Mountains and the Tetons. In 1811, Wilson Price Hunt led the “Overland Astorians,” a band of sixty trappers, toward the Pacific. They reached Henry’s deserted post early in August. It is probable that a member of this party inscribed a rock “calling card” that reads: “Fort Henry 1811 by Capt. Hunt.” This marker is now included in the historical collections of the Yellowstone Park museums. It was found at the fort site in 1933 and donated to the museum by Seasonal Park Ranger-Naturalist Merrill D. Beal.[21] Hunt’s party unfortunately decided to switch from horses to hurriedly-made canoes, which were launched upon Snake River near the fort. The hardship, privation, and recurring peril experienced by this band are among the most severe ever encountered by civilized men. Although they were obliged to separate into three groups in order to subsist each part finally reached the mouth of the Columbia. In 1812, a smaller party called the “Returning Astorians,” under Robert Stuart, probably discovered South Pass.[22]