EARLY EXPLORERS OF THE TRANS-MISSOURI It is customary to read and to teach history in the time-honored fashion which begins at the beginning and comes on down until to-day, not skipping the battles and not forgetting the tables of dynasties, royal or political. Without wishing to be eccentric or iconoclastic, none the less one may venture to suggest that there may be a certain virtue in beginning with events well within our reach and comprehension, and then going backward, which is to say going forward, in our knowledge of our field. This is especially useful as a method in studying the history of the West of the trans-Missouri. We have seen that the first Frémont expedition had no feature of discovery attached to it beyond the climbing to the top of a mountain that had been known by many for years, but which no one else had wanted to climb, because of the general knowledge of the fact that buffalo and beaver did not reside on the mountain tops. We know that Frémont, when he stood at the South Pass, was in the middle of a country that had been well known when he was a child. We have seen that his journey across the plains was over a country perfectly understood and fully charted. There were hostile Indians on the plains in those days, to be sure, yet Indians are far simpler as a problem if you yourself know the exact distances between grass and watering places and cover and good game country. All this information Frémont received ready prepared. Frémont commanded; Kit Carson led. For Kit Carson we may feel a certain reverence as a man of the real West; but shall we believe that even Kit Carson divided with Frémont the experience of setting foot in a new and virgin world? Not so. Kit Carson himself, great man as he was, never claimed to be a great explorer. He is properly to be called a great traveler, not a great discoverer. He perhaps found some beaver streams at first hand, but he himself would have been the first to admit that he got all the great features of the Rockies at second hand. Before him there were discoverers and pseudo-discoverers, actual as well as false prophets of adventure.