The direction in which Colter traveled is a matter of no essential importance, and that here adopted is based solely upon the consideration that the doubling of the trail upon itself between Clark's Fork and the Stinkingwater River, and the erratic course of the route around Yellowstone Lake, can not be well accounted for on the contrary hypothesis.[M] [M] In adopting, as Colter's point of crossing the Yellowstone, the ford at Tower Creek, the author has followed the Hon. N. P. Langford, in his reprint of Folsom's "Valley of the Upper Yellowstone." (See Appendix E.) All other writers who have touched upon the subject have assumed the ford to be that near the Mud Geyser. Such, in the main, is "Colter's route in 1807." That he was the discoverer of Yellowstone Lake, and the foremost herald of the strange phenomena of that region, may be accepted as beyond question. He did not, as is generally supposed, see the Firehole Geyser Basins. But he saw too much for his reputation as a man of veracity. No author or map-maker would jeopardize the success of his work by incorporating in it such incredible material as Colter furnished. His stories were not believed; their author became the subject of jest and ridicule; and the region of his adventures was long derisively known as "Colter's Hell."[N] [N] This name early came to be restricted to the locality where Colter discovered the tar spring on the Stinkingwater, probably because few trappers ever saw the other similar localities visited by him. But Colter's descriptions, so well summed up by Irving in his "Captain Bonneville," undoubtedly refer in large part to what he saw in the Yellowstone and Snake River Valleys. The story of Colter's subsequent experience before he returned to St. Louis is thrilling in the extreme. Although it has no direct bearing upon this narrative, still, since it is part of the biography of the discoverer of the Upper Yellowstone, it can not be omitted. The detailed account we owe to the naturalist Bradbury, already referred to. He saw Colter above St. Louis in the spring of 1811, one year after his return from the mountains, and received the story directly from him. All other accounts are variations from Bradbury. Irving, who has made this story an Indian classic, borrows it _in toto_. Perhaps in all the records of Indian adventure there is not another instance of such a miraculous escape, in which the details are throughout so clearly within the range of possibility. It is a consistent narrative from beginning to end. In briefest outline it is as follows: