The Astor Trail was made in 1810 through South Dakota west to the Coast. A great impetus was given to the fur business by the Lewis and Clark Exploring Party in 1804. They opened up the first Coast to Coast trail, and were the first white men to cross the Continent between the British operations on the North, and the Spanish on the South. Lewis had been President Jefferson's Private Secretary, and Captain Clark was his friend. They traveled eighty-five hundred miles, and they nationalized the fur business which grew to such proportions that years after they had opened up the line of travel, we were selling in London, alone, two million one hundred and seventy thousand furs annually. The rich peltries then were what gold and silver were later, and what grain, alfalfa, fruit, sugar beets and potatoes are now, and will be as long as water, soil, and sunshine blend. Buffalo and otter skins brought in the western market three dollars each; beaver skins four dollars; coon and muskrat twenty-five cents; deer skins thirty-eight cents per pound.
The early trappers could have been of inestimable benefit to the Government, had they been called upon to help solve the perplexing Indian problems that for so many years confronted us. They knew the Indians, their languages, habits and customs; and had their knowledge and influence with the natives been utilized, we might have peaceably settled many of the difficulties that required the sacrifice of so many lives and the unnecessary expenditure of so much money.
The fur industry, however, depended upon the keen perception of an awkward, unlettered, German boy for its growth and quick development. He came to London from Germany, with his bundle under his arm, to help in his brother's music store. John Jacob Ashdoer was his name, which by evolution became "Astor." With great frugality and unceasing industry, he saved enough in two years to pay his passage on a sailing ship to America, and there was enough left of his little hoard to buy seven flutes of his uncle, his sole stock in trade. When he reached this country, he traded one of his flutes for some furs; and that particular flute, and those particular furs, made history. It turned his attention to the fur trade, and laid the foundation for the greatest landed estate in America. With his pack on his back, he traveled among the Indian tribes of the Eastern States, and got their furs in exchange for gaudy trinkets, such as beads and ribbons. He personally took the furs to London, so as to realize the highest possible price for them and rapidly grew rich. In 1800 when he had only been in this country fifteen years, he was clearing fifty thousand dollars on a single trip of one of his sailing vessels.
It was at this time that Astor founded Astoria as a fur trading point, on the Columbia River, expecting to operate by ship, as well as freighting overland by the way of Ft. Laramie, and thus control the fur traffic along the tributary rivers. The destruction of Astoria by the British kept him from realizing his dream of becoming "the richest man in the world." Washington Irving and John Jacob Astor were friends, and the latter placed in Irving's hands all the records of his Company's operations, from which Irving gathered much interesting data, and many thrilling experiences from the lives of the early trappers and hunters. He wrote "Astoria" as a compliment to his friend. In this book he pictures the Rocky Mountains as having an elevation in places of twenty-five thousand feet, but frankly states that it is only conjecture, since their altitude had never been measured. The average height of the Rocky Mountains exceed that of the famous Alps, a number of the noted peaks being above thirteen thousand feet.
Some of Irving's interesting and pleasing prophecies of our country follow:
"It is a region almost as vast and trackless as the ocean, and at the time of which we treat, but little known, excepting through the vague accounts of Indian hunters. A part of their route would lay across an immense tract, stretching North and South for hundreds of miles along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, and drained by the tributaries of the Missouri and the Mississippi. This region, which resembles one of the immeasurable steppes of Asia, has not inaptly been termed 'The Great American Desert.' It spreads forth into undulating and trackless plains and desolate sandy wastes, wearisome to the eye from their extent and monotony, and which are supposed by geologists to have formed the ancient floor of the ocean, countless ages since, when its primeval waves beat against the granite bases of the Rocky Mountains.
"It is a land where no man permanently abides; for, in certain seasons of the year, there is no food, either for the hunter or his steed. The herbage is parched and withered; the brooks and streams are dried up; the buffalo, the elk and the deer have wandered to distant parts, keeping within the verge of expiring verdure, and leaving behind them a vast uninhabited solitude, seamed by ravines, the beds of former torrents, but now serving only to tantalize and increase the thirst of the traveler. Such is the nature of this immense wilderness of the far West, which apparently defies cultivation, and the habitation of civilized life * * * Here may spring up new and mongrel races * * * Some may gradually become pastoral hordes, like those rude and migratory people, half shepherd, half warrior, who, with their flocks and herds, roam the plains of Upper Asia; but, others, it is to be apprehended, will become predatory bands, mounted on the fleet steeds of the prairies, with the open plains for their marauding ground, and the mountains for their retreats and lurking places. Here they may resemble those great hordes of the North; 'Gog and Magog with their bands,' that haunted the gloomy imaginations of the prophets, 'A great Company and a mighty host all riding upon horses, and warring upon those nations which were at rest, and dwelt peaceably, and had gotten cattle and goods.'"
CHAPTER VI.