The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific, 1822-1829: With the Original Journals (Classic Reprint)

Preface Since the appearance of Brigadier-general Hiram M. Chittenden s The American Fur Trade of the Far West? there has been printed a considerable volume of source material, covering the operations throughout the west of American and British fur traders with their attendant discoveries. The publication of the Trudeau, Ross, and Ogden journals, alone, has necessitated the reconstruction of the history of geographic discovery in the trans-M issouri area. The reprinting in Reuben G. Thwaites s Early Western Travels2 of a number of hitherto very rare narratives of exploration, together with the collection of a considerable quantity of scattered and hitherto unpublished historical data, and the more recent monograph literature on particular phases of western exploration have all thrown much new light on geographic history. For this reason it has seemed advisable to introduce this account of the A shley-S mith explorations with a brief summary of the progress of discovery attending the operations of the fur traders prior to 1822. The expeditions of William Henry Ashley and Jedediah Strong Smith are but two divisions of one enterprise, the discovery and utilisation of a central route to the Pacific by way of the Platte, the Interior Basin, and i Chittenden, HM. The American Fur Trade of the Far West (N ew York, 1902), 3vols. 2T hwaites, R. G. editor. Early Western Travels, 1748-1846 (C leveland, 1904-1908), 32 vols.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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