We took the
trail along the foot of the Rocky Mountains, running north until
after crossing North Platte. Here we struck across the Bad Lands,
and I thought that if there ever was a place rightly named, it
surely was this section of country. We were three days crossing
this God-forsaken country; and we would often travel a half day
without seeing a living thing of any description. From there we
struck across the main divide of the Rocky Mountains, and were
three days crossing over to the headwaters of Green river, and
were somewhat disappointed when we learned that Green river had
been trapped over by the Hudson Bay Company the year before.
However, we were there, and it was too late to look up another
trapping-ground, so we occupied some of the old cabins that had
been erected by the Hudson Bay Company and went to trapping.
Notwithstanding the country had all been trapped over, we had fair
success, or, at least, much better than we expected. We stayed
there and trapped until some time in February, when we pulled up
and moved down Green river nearly twenty miles and there we
trapped for two weeks, but not with as good success as we had had
at the old camp.
We again moved camp down to what was known as Hell's Hole. There
we found about forty French Canadians trapping for the Hudson Bay
Company, who, by the way, had plenty of bad whiskey.
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