The fur trade, which up to about 1835 was principally in beaver skins, had now somewhat changed, and buffalo robes were the chief article of traffic.  But the buffalo were also beginning to diminish.  They were no longer found on the western slope of the mountains, and no wonder, as the fur companies annually gathered in about ninety thousand marketable skins during the ten years ending with 1842, yet it was only those animals killed in the cold months whose pelts were suitable for the fur business.  The largest number of buffalo were killed in the summer months for other purposes; therefore one is not surprised that they were soon exterminated in the Colorado River Valley, where they never were as numerous as on the plains, and apparently never went west of the mouth of White River.

Fremont went over to the California region, returning through Nevada by way of the Spanish Trail, past Las Vegas (see cut, page 137), and up the Virgen, which he called the most dreary river he had ever seen, till he reached the point where Escalante had turned east.  From here he followed Escalante’s trail back to Utah Lake, passing through Mountain Meadows (1844), afterward the scene of the terrible massacre of emigrants by a body of Mormons under John D. Lee.* His route was full of interesting adventures, but it is not possible to give details here.** Passing over the Wasatch by way of Spanish Fork, he again entered the valley of the Colorado on the head-waters of the Uinta, pausing briefly at Roubidoux’s Fort on Uinta River.  Soon after he left, the fort and its occupants were annihilated by the Utes.  Crossing Ashley Fork he climbed on the trail high up the mountain, where he had “a view of the river below shut up amongst rugged mountains;” Whirlpool Canyon and the Canyon of Lodore.  Descending then to Brown’s Hole, he crossed the river in a skin boat, and camped just above Vermilion Creek, opposite the remains of an “old fort,” which was doubtless Fort Davy Crockett.  “Here the river enters between lofty precipices of red rock” (now the Gate of Lodore), “and the country below is said to assume a very rugged character; the river and its affluents passing through canons which forbid all access to the water.”  After journeying to the head of the Platte, and south through the Parks, he went east by the Arkansas, and came again in 1845 to cross the Green a little farther south on his way to California.

* For an account of this unfortunate affair see The Rocky Mountain Saints, chapter xliii., by T. B. H. Stenhouse.  I knew Lee.  Personally he was an agreeable man, and to me he disclaimed responsibility in this matter.

** See Fremont and ’49 by F. S. Dellenbaugh.