[3] Kansas City took its name thus early from its neighborhood to the Kansas River (though in Missouri), which has led many to suppose it is in Kansas.
[4] St. Vrain's Fort, a fur-trading post, in communication with Santa Fé by way of Taos. Under the mountains, seventeen miles east of Long's Peak.
[5] Fort Laramie, first called Fort William (Sublette), built by Robert Campbell about 1835, since named from the Laramie Fork, near which it stands. Its walls were ranges of adobe houses, in the Spanish style, with bastions at the corners. The house tops or roof formed a banquette, on which, again, was set a row of palisades.
Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas, established by Charles Bent, was the third of these remote posts, for which the above description will suffice.
[6] Cache-à-la-Poudre. French, hiding-place for the powder.
[7] Salt Lake was known to early Spanish explorers (see [p. 37]); had been often visited, but not explored. Ashley of Missouri, who led a party of trappers to the heads of the Colorado in 1823, built the next year a trading-house near Salt Lake. See also Bonneville's account. Fremont's explorations disclosed the existence of a great interior basin between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, whose waters fall into Utah and Salt Lakes instead of reaching the Columbia or Colorado.
[8] Fort Boisé. French, meaning wooded.
[9] Ashburton Treaty settled our north-eastern boundary with England, and carried the parallel 49° to the Rocky Mountains, but not beyond. In 1846 a second treaty carried it to the Pacific.