Wyeth, of Boston and his "down easters." Wyeth learned where Sublette and party were bound, and with the directness and frankness of the New Englander character he told him his purpose and dilemma. Sublette readily agreed that the two parties travel together. On the way across the prairies. Sublette's experienced hunters had taught the New Englanders how to hunt, and much other necessary information of the wilderness, and by this time they were much better equipped for the emergencies of the mountains. Horses had been acquired at the mouth of the Platte, and the party were all well mounted and had plenty to pack their merchandise.

Wyeth's definite purpose was to establish

posts on the Columbia, and supply them from ships around "the Horn," using the ships to convey the peltries back to market. The plan was not successful. He always felt out of his element in the mountains, and the full force of the hardships fell heavily upon him. He frequently wrote in a discouraging vein. "I am sitting on a rock with plain dried buffalo as my entire meal." "I gave the boys some alcohol, more than was good for the peace of the party, and went on a good sized spree myself," etc.

Wyeth raised the American flag over the wilderness of Idaho, when he built Fort Hall, and on the Columbia over the lost Astoria. But in the end he sold his fort on Wappatoo island to the Hudson Bay, and Fort Hall was burned in a Blackfeet Indian raid, in which the hardy mountaineers, Rezner and Robinson lost their lives.