If we go by dates alone we shall find ourselves presently concerned with Captain Bonneville, sometime famous as an “explorer” of the Rocky Mountains. Him we may class as one of the pseudo-discoverers. He was an army officer, who discovered nothing, but who obtained a great reputation through the chronicling of his deeds in the Rocky Mountains; so great that, having grossly exceeded his leave of absence, he was eventually reinstated in the Army after he had lost his commission, the president of the United States remarking that he “could not fail so to reward one who had contributed so much to the welfare of his country”! Bonneville was a lucky man. He lost but few mules and but few men. He brought back a map on which was founded the greater part of his reputation, maps and scientific nomenclature having been ever, in the estimation of some, held to surpass any original discoveries in geography and natural history. Bonneville’s map had a certain value at the time, yet it held little actual first hand information, because it was built upon knowledge derived from Gallatin, from that big man, General Ashley, the fur trader, and from the latter’s gallant associate, Jedediah Smith.[44] As to Bonneville himself, he was, unless we shall except Frémont, the first great example of the class later to be known as “tenderfoot.” A certain glory attaches to him, because he was the first man to take a wagon train through the South Pass, which he did ten years before Frémont “discovered” that country. Bonneville went West in 1832, two years before Kit Carson stopped trapping beaver for the reason that it no longer paid him. The lucky captain traveled up the Platte valley to Fort Laramie, then broke across on the old mountain road of the West, up the Sweetwater, to the South Pass, thence getting upon the Pacific waters, the headwaters of the Green River; one of the two great arms of the Colorado, and an important stream in fur trading days. Obviously, Bonneville wanted to grow rich quickly in the fur trade, being more intent on that than on exploration for geographical purposes. He discovered that there was already a West beyond him, even then a distinct region, with ways of its own and men of its own. He continued to move about in the mountains for a couple of years more, the South Pass serving as the center of his operations; but really it is of little concern what Bonneville did during the remainder of his long stay in the West. We may, none the less, after a fashion, call Bonneville one of the predecessors of Carson, if we shall date Carson’s earthly existence only from his connection with Frémont. How, then, did the lucky captain indirectly serve as predecessor of quiet and valid Kit Carson?