as a heinous offense, that he had procured a small mountain howitze from the arsenal at St. Louis, in addition to his other fire-arms.

But the heroic resolution of the fair daughter of Missouri, his wife defeated the ignoble aims of those who would have stopped the young adventurer in his career of toil and glory. After her husband's depart ure from St. Louis, the letters intended for him were opened by her at his request, and such as needed immediate attention were sent after him. She perused the communication which contained the unwelcome news from Washington, and resolved to detain it, and Frémont knew nothing of the contents, until his return more than a year afterward.

The

In May, 1843, Lieutenant Frémont commenced this journey, having twenty-five men under him, and in November he reached the tide-water region of the Columbia. He carefully explored the whole intervening region, and had then already completed the service ordered by the gov ernment. He might have immediately returned home, and have chosen for that purpose the most convenient and secure road. But he had other and nobler aims in view. When at Fort Vancouver, a guest of Dr. McLaughlin, governor of the British Hudson Bay Fur Company, he obtained some information in reference to his proposed route, which was to cross diagonally that great unknown region, making a line from the Lower Columbia to the Upper Colorado, on the Gulf of California. geography of this vast region was then entirely unknown. Conjectures existed as to the probable features of its grand outlines, but even these he discovered afterward to have been erroneous. A large river termed the Buena Ventura, was supposed to flow from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco. But no such body of water existed; and the bold adventurer suffered many hardships from the absence of those resources which the existence of a great river along his route would have procured. As he journeyed along he encountered deep snows, and the most rigorous weather. Hostile Indians hovered around his path. He sometimes journeyed near dangerous precipices, and over rugged mountains. Occasionally from great eminences covered with a deep mantle of perpetual snow, he looked down upon verdant vales beneath, shut out by the high barriers of nature from all the rest of the world. One mule packed with a valuable burden of botanical collections, slid off from the verge of a cliff half a mile in hight, and was dashed to pieces in the far-off ravine below. No rewards could induce the Indians to venture into these perilous solitudes as guides to the travelers. Soon men and horses began to sink beneath the unparalleled sufferings of the journey. The slow and mournful procession of feeble starving skeletons crawled like a disabled serpent along the dangerous hights of their mountain way in the dead of winter, surrounded by the deep snows of the Sierra Nevada, and by all the awful incidents of a march among the rudest fortresses and solitudes of nature. But no danger or suffering appalled the resolute spirit of the bold leader of the expedition. After a journey of two thousand miles, which for intrepid endurance, unconquerable determination, and skillful management, is not surpassed by the achievement of any conqueror, Frémont and his associates arrived at Sutter's Settlement in the valley of the Sacramento, and there rested and recruited from the sufferings which they had endured.

f

PREPARATIONS.

377

Frémont, or short interval of repose, then resumed his journey to The still farther south, and explored the valley of San Joaquin. Thence, crossing the mountains through a gap, he skirted the Great Basin. As he journeyed through this comparatively unknown world, he made rich collections in various branches of science. All the great features of the western slope of our continent were then scrutinized. The Great Salt Lake, the Utah Lake, the Little Salt Lake, the present retreat and future empire of the Latter Day Saints, and the mountains of the Sierra Ne vada, from whose bowels, till then unviolated, the emigrant has torn un counted millions of gold treasure-all these were examined and explored by this expedition. During eleven months they were never out of sight of ice and snow. At length, having accomplished all that he desired, Frémont returned to his home, after an absence of a year, bearing the rich fruits of his toils, dangers, and heroism, in an enlarged and satisfactory acquaintance with the resources of those vast and unappropriated realms and contribution in botany, mineralogy, geology; together with valuable investigations in meteorology, geography climatology, and other departments of science, as will fully appear from extracts from his own narrative in the following pages.

To Col. J. J. Abert, Chief of the Corps of Topographical Engineers: SIR-In pursuance of your instructions, to connect the reconnoisance of 1842, which I had the honor to conduct, with the surveys of Commander Wilkes on the coast of the Pacific ocean, so as to give a connected survey of the interior of our continent, I proceeded to the Great West early in the spring of 1843, and arrived, on the 17th of May, at the little town of Kansas, on the Missouri frontier, near the junction of the Kanas river with the Missouri river, where I was detained near two weeks in completing the necessary preparations for the extended explorations which my instructions contemplated.

My party consisted principally of Creole and Canadian French, and Americans, amounting in all to thirty-nine men; among whom you will recognize several of those who were with me in my first expedition, and who have been favorably brought to your notice in a former report, Mr. Thomas Fitzpatrick, whom many years of hardship and exposure in the western territories, had rendered familiar with a portion of the country it was designed to explore, had been selected as our guide; and Mr. Charles Preuss, who had been my assistant in a previous journey, was again associated with me in the same capacity, on the present expedition. Agreeably to your directions, Mr. Theodore Talbot, of Washington city, had been attached to the party, with a view to advancement in his profession; and at St. Louis I had been joined by Mr. Frederick Dwight, a gentleman of Springfield, Massachusetts, who availed himself of our overland journey to visit the Sandwich Islands and China, by way of Fort Van

Jouver.

The party was generally armed with Hall's carbines, which, with a brass twelve pound howitzer, had been furnished to me from the United States Arsenal at St. Louis, agreeably to the orders of Colonel S. W. Kearney commanding the third military division. Three men were especially de

tailed for the management of this piece, under the charge of Louis Zin del, a native of Germany, who had been nineteen years a non-commision. ed officer of artillery in the Prussian army, and regularly instructed in the duties of his profession. The camp equipage and provisions were transported in twelve carts, drawn each by two mules; and a light covered wagon, mounted on good springs, had been provided for the safer carriage of instruments.

To make the exploration as useful as possible, I determined, in conformity to your general instructions, to vary the route to the Rocky Moun tains from that followed in 1842. The route was then up the valley of the Great Platte river to the South Pass, in north latitude 42°; the route now determined on was up the valley of the Kansas river, to the head of the Arkansas river, and to some pass in the mountains, if any could be found, at the sources of that river.

By making this deviation from the former route, the problem of a new road to Oregon and California, in a climate more genial, might be solved; and a better knowledge obtained of an important river, and the country it drained, while the great object of the expedition would find its point of commencement at the termination of the former, which was at that great gate in the ridge of the Rocky Mountains called the South Pass, and on the lofty peak of the mountain which overlooks it, deemed the highest peak in the ridge, and from the opposite side of which four great rivers take their rise, and flow to the Pacific or the Mississippi.

Various obstacles delayed our departure until the morning of the 29th, when we commenced our long voyage; and at the close of a day, rendered disagreeably cold by incessant rain, encamped about four miles beyond the frontier, on the verge of the great prairies.

From Elm Grove, our route until the third of June was nearly the same as that described to you in 1842. Trains of wagons were almost constantly in sight; giving to the road a populous and animated appearance, although the greater portion of the emigrants were collected at the crossing, or already on their march beyond the Kansas river. Leaving at the ford the usual emigrant road to the mountains, we continued our route along the southern side of the Kansas, where we found the country much more broken than on the northern side of the river, and where our progress was much delayed by the numerous small streams, which obliged us to make frequent bridges.

We arrived on the 8th at the mouth of the Smoky-hill fork, which is the principal southern branch of the Kansas: forming here, by its junction with the Republican, or northern branch, the main Kansas river. Neither stream was fordable, and the necessity of making a raft, together with bad weather, detained us here till the morning of the 11th, when we resumed our journey along the Republican fork. By our observations, the junction of the streams is in lat. 39° 40′ 38′′, long. 96° 24' 36", and at an elevation of 926 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. For several days we continued to travel along the Republican, through a country beautifully watered with numerous streams, and handsomely timbered; and rarely an incident occurred to vary the monotonous resem blance which one day on the prairies here bears to another, and which

scarcely require a particular description. Now and then, we caught a glimpse of a small herd of elk; and occasionally a band of antelopes, whose curiosity sometimes brought them within rifle range, would circle round us and then scour off into the prairies. As we advanced on our road, these became more frequent; but as we journeyed on the line asually followed by the trapping and hunting parties of the Kansas and Delaware Indians, game of every kind continued very shy and wild. The bottoms which form the immediate valley of the main river, were generally about three miles wide; having a rich soil of black vegetable mould, and, for a prairie country, well interspersed with wood. The country was every where covered with a considerable variety of grasses, occasionally poor and thin, but far more frequently luxuriant and rich. We had been gradually and regularly ascending in our progress westward, and on the evening of the 14th, when we encamped on a little creek in the valley of the Republican, 265 miles by our traveling road from the mouth of the Kansas, we were at an elevation of 1,520 feet. That part of the river where we were now encamped is called by the Indians the Big Timber. Hitherto our route had been laborious and extremely slow, the unusually wet spring and constant rain having so saturated the whole country that it was necessary to bridge every water-course, and, for days together, our usual march averaged only five or six miles. Finding that at such a rate of travel it would be impossible to comply with your instructions, I determined at this place to divide the party, and, leaving Mr. Fitzpatrick with twenty-five men in charge of the provisions and heavier baggage of the camp, to proceed myself in advance, with a light party of fifteen men, taking with me the howitzer and the light wagon which carried the instruments.

On the 19th, in the afternoon, we crossed the Pawnee road to the Arkansas, and traveling a few miles onward, the monotony of the prairies was suddenly dispelled by the appearance of five or six buffalo bulls, forming a vanguard of immense herds, among which we were traveling a few days afterwards.

Our road on the 25th lay over high smooth ridges, 3,100 feet above the sea; buffalo in great numbers, absolutely covering the face of the country. At evening we encamped within a few miles of the main Republican, on a little creek, where the air was fragrant with the perfume of the artemisia filifolia, which we here saw for the first time, and which was now in bloom. Shortly after leaving our encampment on the 26th, we found suddenly that the nature of the country had entirely changed. Bare sand-hills everywhere surrounded us in the undulating ground along which we were moving, and the plants peculiar to a sandy soil made their appearance in abundance. A few miles further we entered the valley of a large stream, afterwards known to be the Republican fork of the Kansas, whose shallow waters, with a depth of only a few inches, were spread out over a bed of yellowish white sand six hundred yards wide. With the exception of one or two distant and detached groves, no timber of any kind was to be seen; and the features of the country assumed a desert character, with which the broad river, struggling for existence among the quicksands along the treeless banks, was strikingly in keeping On the

opposite side, the broken ridges assumed almost a mountainous appear ance; and fording the stream, we continued on our course among these ridges, and encamped late in the evening at a little pond of very bad water, from which we drove away a herd of buffalo that were standing in and about it. Our encampment this evening was 3,500 feet above the sea. We traveled now for several days through a broken and dry sandy region, about 4,000 feet above the sea, where there were no running streams; and some anxiety was constantly felt on account of the uncer tainty of water, which was only to be found in small lakes that occurred occasionally among the hills. The discovery of these always brought pleasure to the camp, as around them were generally green flats, which afforded abundant pasturage for our animals; and here were usually collected herds of buffalo, which now were scattered over all the country in countless numbers.

The soil of bare and hot sands supported a varied and exuberant growth of plants, which were much farther advanced than we had previously found them, and whose showy bloom somewhat relieved the appearance of general sterility. Crossing the summit of an elevated and continuous range of rolling hills, on the afternoon of the 30th of June, we found ourselves overlooking a broad and misty valley, where, about ten miles distant, and 1,000 feet below us, the South fork of the Platte was rolling magnificently along, swollen with the waters of the melting snows. It was in strong and refreshing contrast with the parched country from which we had just issued; and when, at night, the broad expanse of water grew indistinct, it almost seemed that we had pitched our tents on the shore of the sea.

Traveling along up the valley of the river, here 4,000 feet above the sea, in the afternoon of July 1, we caught a far and uncertain view of a faint blue mass in the west, as the sun sank behind it; and from our camp in the morning, at the mouth of Bijou, Long's Peak and the neighboring mountains stood out into the sky, grand and luminously white, covered to their bases with glittering snow.

On the evening of the 3d, as we were journeying along the partially overflowed bottoms of the Platte, where our passage stirred up swarms of musquitoes, we came unexpectedly on an Indian, who was perched upon a bluff, cautiously watching the movements of our caravan. He belonged to a village of Oglallah Sioux, who had lost all their animals in the severity of the preceding winter, and were now on their way up the Bijou fork to beg horses from the Arapahoes, who were hunting buffalo at the head of that river. Several came into our camp at noon; and, as they were hungry, as usual, they were provided with buffalo-meat, of which the hunters had brought in an abundant supply.

About noon, on the 4th of July, we arrived at the fort, where Mr. St Vrain received us with his customary kindness, and invited us to join him in a feast which had been prepared in honor of the day.

Our animals were very much worn out, and our stock of provisions entirely exhausted, when we arrived at the fort; but I was disappointed in my hope of obtaining relief, as I found it in a very impoverished condition; and we were able to procure only a little unbolted Mexican fleur, and some salt, with a few pounds of powder and lead