He had a tin case made, in which the letters and papers addressed to Mr.Astor were carefully soldered up.

This case he intended to strap upon his shoulders, so as to bear it about with him, sleeping and waking, in all changes and chances, by land or by water, and never to part with it but with his life! As the route of these several parties would be the same for nearly four hundred miles up the Columbia, and within that distance would lie through the piratical pass of the rapids, and among the freebooting tribes of the river, it was thought advisable to start about the same time, and to keep together.

Accordingly, on the 22d of March, they all set off, to the number of seventeen men, in two canoes--and here we cannot but pause to notice the hardihood of these several expeditions, so insignificant in point of force, and severally destined to traverse immense wildernesses where larger parties had experienced so much danger and distress.

When recruits were sought in the preceding year among experienced hunters and voyageurs at Montreal and St.Louis, it was considered dangerous to attempt to cross the Rocky Mountains with less than sixty men; and yet here we find Reed ready to push his way across those barriers with merely three companions.

Such is the fearlessness, the insensibility to danger, which men acquire by the habitude of constant risk.