Editorial note — Chapter IV · EARLY EXPLORERS OF THE TRANS-MISSOURI

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.