On the 17th of January, while their boats landed at one of the old villages established by the original French colonists of the region then known as the Province of Louisiana, they met the celebrated Daniel Boone, who was then in his eighty-fifth year, and the next morning they were visited by John Coulter, who had been with Lewis and Clarke on their memorable expedition eight years previously.[1] Since the return of Lewis and Clarke’s expedition, Coulter had made a wonderful journey on his own account.  He floated down the whole length of the Missouri River in a small canoe, accomplishing the passage of three thousand miles in a month.

On the 8th of April Hunt’s party came in sight of Fort Osage,[2] where they remained for three days, and were delightfully entertained by the officers of the garrison.  On the 10th they again embarked and ascended the Missouri.  On the 28th the party landed at the mouth of the Platte and ate their breakfast on one of the islands there.  After passing the mouth of the river Platte, they camped on its banks a short distance above Papillion Creek.  On the 10th of May they reached the village of the Omahas, camped in its immediate neighbourhood, and on the 15th of the same month they started for the interior of the continent.  Their route lay far north of a line drawn parallel to the Platte Valley, but they entered it after travelling through the Black Hills, somewhere near the headwaters of the river from which the beautiful valley takes its name.  After untold hardships and sufferings the party arrived at Astoria on the following February, having travelled a distance of thirty-five hundred miles.  They had taken a circuitous route, for Astoria is only eighteen hundred miles, in a direct line, from St. Louis.

The first authentic account of an expedition through the valley of the Platte was that of Mr. Robert Stuart, in the employ of John Jacob Astor.  He was detailed to carry despatches from the mouth of the Columbia to New York, informing Mr. Astor of the condition of his venture on the remote shores of the Pacific.  The mission entrusted to Mr. Stuart was filled with perils, and he was selected for the dangerous duty on account of his nerve and strength.  He was a young man, and although he had never crossed the Rocky Mountains, he had already given proofs, on other perilous expeditions, of his competence for the new duty.  His companions were Ben Jones and John Day,[3] both Kentuckians, two Canadians, and some others who had become tired of the wild life, and had determined to go back to civilization.

They all left Astoria on the 29th of June, 1812, and reached the headwaters of the Platte, thence they travelled down the valley to its mouth, and embarked in boats for St. Louis.

When they reached the Snake River deserts, great sandy plains stretched out before them.  Only occasionally were there intervales of grass, and the miserable herbage was saltweed, resembling pennyroyal.  The desponding party looked in vain for some relief from the lifeless landscape.  All game had apparently shunned the dreary, sun-parched waste, but hunger was now and then appeased by a few fish which they caught in the streams, or some sun-dried salmon, or a dog given to them by the kind-hearted Shoshones whose lodges they sometimes came across.