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Show mined , it would be 16 found to amount to more than two thousand miles . As early as 1825 General Henry Ashley ( estab- estab ) ( 'lished lished ) ( fur-trading furtrading ) posts at several points on the Green River above Greenriver , Utah . Ashley was . at the head of one of the largest fur companies in North America . His operations were comparable with those of the Hudson Bay Company . . Ashley attempted a boating expedition upon the Green River , and that for only a few miles . . Had the Green River been a navigable stream Ashley would undoubtedly have transported his furs by way of the Green River and the Colorado River to the Gulf of Lower California and from there by ships to the New York or the London markets . . Instead of ( -doing doing ) so he and other fur traders chose in preference to transport their fur across the Rocky Mountains to the Missouri River and from there to the City of St . . Louis , from which point their furs eventually ( reached Teached ) the eastern markets . ( See Dellenbaugh , Compl . Exhibit 13 , page 108 ; Freeman , Compl . Exhibit 81 , page 82 . . ) It was the trader and trapper who first explored and established the routes of travel which are now and always will be , the avenues of in that ( commerce region . . P . . 92 Preface to The American Fur Trade of the Far West by Hiram Martin Chittenden . . Francis P . . Harper , N . . Y . y , 1902 . . ) The ( Master's Masters ) conclusion ( M . . R . . p . . 51 ) is that there existed a belief in some quarters that the rivers |