Mr. Preuss and myself on the left, and the men on the opposite side of the river. Climbing out of the canon, we found ourselves in a very broken country, where we were not yet able to recognize any locality In the course of our descent through the canon, the rooks, which at the upper end was of the decomposing granite, changed into a varied sandstone formation. The hill and points of the ridges were covered with fragments of a yellow sandstone, of which the strata were sometimes displayed in the broken ravines which interrupted our course, and made our walk extremely fatiguing. At one point of the canon the red argillaceous sandstone rose in a wall of five hundred feet, surmounted by a strátum of white sandstone; and in an opposite ravine a column of red sandstone rose, in form like a steeple, about one hundred and fifty feet high. The scenery was exceedingly picturesque, and notwithstanding our forlorn condition, we were frequently obliged to stop and admire it. Our progress was not very rapid. We had emerged from the water half naked, and, on arriving at the top of the precipice, I found myself with only one moccasin. The fragments of rock made walking painful, and I was frequently obliged to stop and pull out the thorns of the cactus, here the prevailing plant, and with which a few minutes' walk covered the bottoms of my feet. From this ridge the river emerged into a smiling prairie, and, descending to the bank for water, we were joined by Benoist. The rest of the party were out of sight, having taken a more inland route. We crossed the river repeatedly-sometimes able to ford it, and sometimes swimming-climbed over the ridges of two more canons, and towards evening reached the cut, which we here named the Hot Spring gate. On our previous visit in July, we had not entered this pass, reserving it for our descent in the boat; and when we entered it this evening, Mr. Preuss was a few hundred feet in advance. Heated with the long march, he came suddenly upon a fine bold spring gushing from the rock, about ten feet above the river. Eager to enjoy the crys tal water, he threw himself down for a hasty draught, and took a mouthful of water almost boiling hot. He said nothing to Benoist, who laid himself down to drink; but the steam from the water arrested his eagerness, and he escaped the hot draught. We had no thermometer to ascertain the temperature, but I could hold my hand in the water just long enough to count two seconds. There are eight or ten of these springs discharging themselves by streams large enough to be called runs. A loud hollow noise was heard from the rock, which I supposed to be produced by the fall of water. The strata immediately where they issue is a fine white calcareous sandstone, covered with an incrustation of common salt. Leaving this Thermopyla of the west, in a short walk we reached the red ridge which has been described as lying just above Goat Island. Ascending this, we found some fresh tracks and a button, which showed that the other men had already arrived. A shout from the man who first reached the top of the ridge, responded to from below, informed us that our frends were all on the island; and we were soon among them. We found some pieces of buffalo standing around the fire for us, and managed to get some dry clothes among the people. A sudden storm of rain drove us into the best shelter we could find, where we sleps

soundly, after one of the most fatiguing days I have ever experienced. Early next morning Lajeunesse was sent to the wreck for the articles which had been saved, and about noon we left the island. The mare which we had left here in July had much improved in condition, and she served us well again for some time, but was finally abandoned at a subsequent part of the journey. At 10 in the morning of the 26th we reached Cache camp, where we found every thing undisturbed. We disinterred our deposit, arranged our carts which had been left here on the way out; and, traveling a few miles in the afternoon, encamped for the night at the ford of the Platte.

We reached Laramie fort on the last day of August, after an absence of forty-two days, and had the pleasure to find our friends all well. The fortieth day had been fixed for our return; and the quick eyes of the Indians, who were on the lookout for us, discovered our flag as we wound among the hills. The fort saluted us with repeated discharges of its single piece, which we returned with scattered volleys of our small-arms, and felt the joy of a home reception in getting back to this remote station, which seemed so far off as we went out.

On the morning of the 3d September we bade adieu to our kind friends at the fort, and continued our homeward journey down the Platte, which was glorious with the autumnal splendor of innumerable flowers in full and brilliant bloom. On the warm sands, among the helianthi, one of the characteristic plants, we saw great numbers of rattlesnakes, of which five or six were killed in the morning's ride. We occupied ourselves in improving our previous survey of the river; and, as the weather was fine, astronomical observations were generally made at night and at noon.

We halted for a short time on the afternoon of the 5th with a village of Sioux Indians, some of whose chiefs we had met at Laramie. The water in the Platte was exceedingly low; in many places, the large expanse of sands, with some occasional stunted tree on its banks, gave it the air of the sea-coast; the bed of the river being merely a succession of sand-bars, among which the channel was divided into rivulets of a few inches deep. We crossed and recrossed with our carts repeatedly and at our pleasure; and, whenever an obstruction barred our way in the shape of precipitous bluffs that came down upon the river, we turned directly into it, and made our way along the sandy bed, with no other inconvenience than the frequent quicksands, which greatly fatigued our animals. Disinterring on the way the cache which had been made by our party when they ascended the river, we reached without accident, on the evening of the 12th of September, our old encampment of the 2d of July, at the junction of the forks. Our cache of the barrel of pork was found undisturbed, and proved a seasonable addition to our stock of provisions. At this place I had determined to make another attempt to descend the Platte by water, and accordingly spent two days in the construction of a bull boat. Men were sent out on the evening of our arrival, the necessary number of bulls killed, and their skins brought to the camp. Four of the best of them were strongly sewed together with buffalo sinew, and stretched over a basket frame of willow. The seams

were then covered with ashes and tallow, and the boat left exposed to the sun for the greater part of one day, which was sufficient to dry and contract the skin, and make the whole work solid and strong. It had a rounded bow, was eight feet long and five broad, and drew with four men about four inches water. On the morning of the 15th we embarked in our hide boat, Mr. Preuss and myself, with two men. We dragged her over the sands for three or four miles, and then left her on a bar, and abandoned all further attempts to navigate this river. The names given by the Indians are always remarkably appropriate; and certainly none was ever more so than that which they have given to this stream"The Nebraska, or Shallow river." Walking steadily the remainder of the day, a litle before dark we overtook our people at their remaining camp, about twenty-one miles below the junction. The next morning we crossed the Platte, and continued our way down the river bottom on the left bank, where we found an excellent, plainly beaten road.

I had sent forward C. Lambert, with two men, to Bellevue, with directions to ask from Mr. P. Sarpy, the gentleman in charge of the American Company's establishment at that place, the aid of his carpenters in constructing a boat, in which I proposed to descend the Missouri. On the afternoon of the 27th we met one of the men, who had been dispatched by Mr. Sarpy with a welcome supply of provisions and a very kind note, which gave us the very gratifying intelligence that our boat was in rapid progress. On the evening of the 30th we encamped in an almost impenetrable undergrowth on the left bank of the Platte, in the point of land at its confluence with the Missouri-315 miles, according to our reckoning, from the junction of the forks, and 250 from Fort Laramie.

I rose next morning long before daylight, and heard with a feeling of pleasure the tinkling of cow-bells at the settlements on the opposite side of the Missouri. Early in the day we reached Mr. Sarpy's residence; and, in the security and comfort of his hospitable mansion, felt the pleas ure of being within the pale of civilization. We found our boat on the stocks; a few days sufficed to complete her; and, in the afternoon of the 4th, we embarked on the Missouri. All our equipage-horses, carts, and the materiel of the camp-had been sold at public auction at Bellevue. The strength of my party enabled me to man the boat with ten oars, relieved every hour; and we descended rapidly. Early on the morning of the 10th, we halted to make some astronomical observations at the mouth of the Kansas, exactly four months since we had left the trading-post of Mr. Cyprian Chouteau, on the same river, ten miles above. On our descent to this place, we had employed ourselves in surveying and sketching the Missouri, making astronomical observations regularly at night and at mid-day, whenever the weather permitted. These operations on the river were continued until our arrival at the city of St. Louis, Missouri, on the 17th of October.

The London Athenæum, of March, 1844, commences a review of the foregoing report in the following complimentary strain:

"The government of the United States did well when, in furtherance

2

of a resolution to survey the road across the Great Western Prairie and the Rocky Mountains to the Oregon territory, it selected Lieutenant Frémont for the execution of the work. We have rarely met with a production so perfect in its kind as the unpretending pamphlet containing this report. The narrative, clear, full, and lively, occupies only seventysix pages, to which are appended one hundred and thirty pages, filled with the results of botanical researches, and of astronomical and meteorological observations. What a contrast does this present to the voluminous emptiness and conceited rhodomontade so often brought forth by our costly expeditions. The country gone over by Lieutenant Frémont is certainly not the most interesting in the world, nor is it quite new. Yet he is evidently not the man to travel two thousand miles without observing much which is worthy of being recorded, or to write a page which is likely to prove tedious in the reading. His points of view are so well chosen, his delineation has so much truth and spirit, and his general remarks are so accurate and comprehensive, that under his guidance we find the far-west prairies nearly as fresh and tempting as the most favored Arcadian scenes, the hallowed groves of which were never trodden by the foot of a squatting emigrant or fur trader."

JOURNEY FROM MISSOURI TO OREGON.

Important as had been the results of Frémont's first expedition, he pined for others which were still greater and more extensive. He desired to complete his survey across the continent, not only in order to examine the line of travel between the state of Missouri and the tidewater region of the Columbia River, but also to explore that vast and then unknown region, which lay between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. This immense tract comprised the whole western slope of the continent. It contained more than seven hundred miles square; and the journey proposed was one of the boldest and most dangerous ever undertaken by an emmissary either of commerce, discovery, or science.

Lieutenant Frémont asked and obtained orders from the department at Washington to undertake this journey. His instructions directed him only to advance as far as the tide-water region of the Columbia River. He resolved to extend his researches into the untraveled solitudes of the

western limits of the continent. But all his aspirations and triumphs were nearly defeated by the jealousy of the government, and the meanness of the imbecile officials who at that time, but happily only for a very short period, occupied the posts of influence at Washington. James M Porter, of Pennsylvania, was then secretary of war. Scarcely had Frémont reached the frontier of Missouri, when orders arrived at St. Louis, Countermanding the expedition. The alleged ground of complaint was that he had prepared himself with a military equipment, which the pacific nature of his journey did not require. It was specially charged

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.