west passes in
the mountains, the shallowest fords in the rivers, the richest pastures
in the forest, the best salt springs, and the shortest practicable
routes between remote points. They travel thousands of miles, have their
annual migrations backwards and forwards, and never miss the best and
shortest route. These are the first engineers to lay out a road in a new
country; the Indians follow them, and hence a buffalo-road becomes a
war-path. The first white hunters follow the same trails in pursuing
their game; and after that the buffalo-road becomes the wagon-road of
the white man, and finally the macadamized or railroad of the scientific
man. It all resolves itself into the same thing--into the same
buffalo-road; and thence the buffalo becomes the first and safest
engineer. Thus it has been here in the countries which we inhabit and
the history of which is so familiar. The present national road from
Cumberland over the Alleghanies was the military road of General
Braddock; which had been the buffalo-path of the wild animals. So of the
two roads from western Virginia to Kentucky--one through the gap in the
Cumberland mountains, the other down the valley of the Kenhawa. They
were both the war-path of the Indians and the travelling route of the
buffalo, and their first white acquaintances the early hunters.
Buffaloes made them in going from the salt springs on the Holston to the
rich pastures and salt springs of Kentucky; Indians followed them first,
white hunters afterwards--and that is the way Kentucky was discovered.
In more than a hundred years no nearer or better routes have been found;
and science now makes her improved roads exactly where the buffalo's
foot first marked the way and the hunter's foot afterwards followed him.
So all over Kentucky and the West; and so in the Rocky Mountains. The
famous South Pass was no scientific discovery. Some people think
Fremont discovered it. It had been discovered forty years before--long
before he was born. He only described it and confirmed what the hunters
and traders had reported and what they showed him. It was discovered, or
rather first seen by white people, in 1808, two years after the return
of Lewis and Clark, and by the first company of hunters and traders that
went out after their report laid open the prospect of the fur trade in
the Rocky Mountains.

"An enterprising Spaniard of St. Louis, Manuel Lisa, sent out the party;
an acquaintance and old friend of the S