“Who made the first Indian trails?” I asked of my friend, as we stood at the eastern end of this old pathway. He pointed to similar paths crossing the sides of the ridge near to us, and other little paths leading up the valley along the sides of the mountains.

“It was the elk and the deer and the mountain sheep,” said he. “They found the easiest ways to travel; they found the grass and the water.”

[44] All of these maps, by the way, must have been at the disposal of Frémont; yet we do not learn that he believed the east and west course of the Buena Ventura was an impossibility, although Jedediah Smith had long since shown the inaccuracy of this old idea, which later was to cost Frémont so much suffering in the mountains of upper California.
[45] Again, remember this significant date of 1834.
[46] This story of an alleged captivity among the Indians, extending from childhood to young manhood, is by some considered unauthentic. The volume, a curious one, was printed in London, in 1825.
[47] The trail of the white race over the Appalachians was but the trail of the red men. The Sioux Indians, for generations inhabitants of the upper plains country of the West, formerly lived east of the Appalachians. The first settlers of Kentucky and Tennessee simply followed the ancient ways by which the Indians crossed into the valley of the Mississippi. And there, as in the West, the Indians but followed the paths of the wild animals, which clung nearly as possible to the courses of the streams.—V. “The Indians of To-day;” Grinnell.

CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE WATERS[[48]]

Twenty-five years ago potatoes were so high in price in certain towns of the Rocky Mountains that the merchants handling them often reserved the right to retain the peelings, which, in turn, were sold, for planting purposes, the eyes of the potatoes thus having a considerable commercial value, obviously in proportion to the distance from the nearest railroad or steamboat line. This situation could not forever endure. There must come a day when we could afford to throw away our peelings, and throw them away cut thick and carelessly. Equally true is it that the time is coming in America when we shall again gather up our potato-peelings and cherish them. There you have the three ages of the West.[[49]]