Osborne Russell's thrilling lifetime of trapping and wilderness exploration makes for adventurous, eventful and highly readable autobiography. In the nineteenth century, the USA's wilderness was enormous and largely uncharted by the white European settlers who had, until the nineteenth century, been largely confined to the easterly coasts of North America. The discovery of the Rocky Mountains - a remote and rugged landscape unfamiliar to all but the local Native American tribes - sparked a new phase of exploration. Among the first people to learn the lay of these vast lands were fur trappers and traders. Hearing tell of great forests and craggy lands, heavily populated by beasts whose pelts would fetch a great price, trappers such as Osborne Russell ventured to these places in search of adventure and fortune: exotic, high quality fur pelts in those days fetched a handsome price at market.