We have heard of Andrew Henry, whose name was given to a beautiful lake of the Rockies, as well as to a once famous trading post across the range, the lieutenant whose man, Etienne Provost, probably discovered the South Pass. We know of the trader Jackson, one of General Ashley’s bold mountain family, whose name was left to the beautiful valley below the Yellowstone Park, called even to-day Jackson’s Hole. We have heard of the wanderings of Campbell, Fitzpatrick, Sublette, of Jim Bridger, and of General Ashley himself, prince of early mountain traders, father of a bold crew of young successors. We shall presently speak of Bonneville and his northern wagons, and of Bonneville’s man Walker, bigger than himself. We must also trace a part of the march of the first land party to cross this continent, the Astorians, whose broken journeyings down the Snake and Columbia made part of the earliest trail-history of the West. All these different leaders and individuals had much to do with the Oregon trail; the trail that was the road of the adventurers, and also the first real road to the Pacific for that traveler properly to be called the home-seeking man. The Missouri River would do for Manuel Lisa and General Ashley and Major Henry, and the Sublettes, and the Chouteaus, and all those others that held the scores of trading posts which dotted the upper waters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone. The Missouri River and its tributaries gave them their natural roadways; but all these scattered posts, all this devious ancient roadway of the waters, lay far to the northward, on the upper curve of a great arc, the winding way traced out by Lewis and Clark, the way of the up-stream wanderers. The streams ever appealed to explorers. Any man going into unknown country instinctively clings to the waterways, near which he always feels safer. Yet it was the way between and across the streams that spoke most loudly to those settlers that came to stay, to till the soil, who brought with them household goods, who brought ax and plow as well as trap and rifle. The ancient highway for footmen and horsemen, which ran up the valley of the Platte River, extended out along the chord of this great Missouri River arc, along the string of this vast bended bow. The string of this great bow ran four degrees of latitude to the south of the upper curve of the Missouri. Evidently the line of the bow-string was the better way to the Pacific; the more especially since itself followed for so great a distance another preordained pathway of the waters—that of the river Platte, ancient road of the Indian tribes. It was within natural reason, therefore, that the travelers should break away, should leave the upper waterway and start directly overland. This came to pass because there were now horses to be obtained in the West. We are now come to the time of horse transportation; which was the beginning of the day of travel across the streams.