Life in the Rocky Mountains From 1830-1835 / Bookcrop (ePub)

"In 1831 Ferris was with a trapping party on the upper Snake River...had trouble with a band of rival Hudson Bay trappers." -Beaver County News, Jan. 2, 1941

"One of the earliest explorers to visit the Yellowstone...first one to have put into print a trustworthy description of it." -Spokesman-Review, Jun. 30, 1940

"Ferris had many...narrow escapes from death...with the American Fur company." -Brady Vindicator, Jan. 2, 1941

"Ferris...met Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick, Robert Campbell...Milton Sublette...knew Bonneville." -Mountain View Times, Jan. 2, 1941

Warren Angus Ferris (1810-1873) was a trapper, cartographer and diarist in the Rocky Mountains from 1830 to 1835. In 1829, he joined the American Fur Company to explore the Rocky Mountains. He kept a journal of his travels which were published as the book "Life in the Rocky Mountains," published in a series of installments in the Western Literary Messenger, Buffalo,N. Y.: J. S. Chadbourne & Co., from July 13, 1842 to May 4, 1844.

The book gives an account of the Platte River Valley, Cache Valley, the area around Salt Lake City, and Snake River Country. Ferris found Native American guides and made a detour into what is today Yellowstone National Park.

In introducing his book , Ferris writes:

"Westward! Ho! It is the sixteenth of the second month A. D. 1830. and I have joined a trapping, trading, hunting expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Why, I scarcely know, for the motives that induced me to this step were of a mixed complexion, - something like the pepper and salt population of this city of St. Louis. Curiosity, a love of wild adventure, and perhaps also a hope of profit, - for times are hard, and my best coat has a sort of sheepish hang-dog hesitation to encounter fashionable folk - combined to make me look upon the project with an eye of favour. The party consists of some thirty men, mostly Canadians; but a few there are, like myself, from various parts of the Union. Each has some plausible excuse for joining, and the aggregate of disinterestedness would delight the most ghostly saint in the Roman calendar. Engage for money! no, not they; health, and the strong desire of seeing strange lands, of beholding nature in the savage grandeur of her primeval state, - these are the only arguments that could have persuaded such independent and high-minded young fellows to adventure with the American Fur Company in a trip to the mountain wilds of the great west. But they are active, vigorous, resolute, daring, and such are the kind of men the service requires. The Company have no reason to be dissatisfied, nor have they. Everything promises well. No doubt there will be two fortunes apiece for us. Westward! Ho!"