Ross Cox was a fur trader for the Pacific Fur Company. In 1811 he sailed form New York, around the Horn, to Hawaii, and on to the Columbia River, exploring inland to Montana along the Clark Fork and Flathead Rivers. For six years he lived on the frontier--and beyond--in a violent world of white and red men, bears and wolves, frostbite, and starvation. He wasn't a hero, but he was a survivor, and a sharp observer who wrote one of the best firsthand accounts of the fur trapper's life.