GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT 343 by the War Department on the first of the five expeditions which gave him the name of Pathfinder. The Mexican War was ripening fast. England had at that time financial claims upon Mexico, and Mexico was bankrupt. i How to get California was a serious question, reminding United States diplo matists of the old Quaker's advice to his son " Get money, Joseph, get money. Get it honestly if you can but get it." Acquisition of California by settlement was vigorously encouraged. The best routes across the mountains must be dis- covered and" surveyed. Partial explorations of routes to Oregon and California had been made. Emigrants had crossed the Rockies and were settled in the Sacramento Valley. But the geography of the Great Basin was inaccessible to science ; the best and safest routes were only guessed at. Emigration was checked by rumors of perils, alas ! too true. Fremont's order to go to the fron- tier beyond the Mississippi, was changed at his request for something more defi- nite the exploration of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains. August 8, 1842, he reached the South Pass, and then the unexplored was before him untrodden ground. Kit Carson was his guide ; twenty-eight men made up his party Canadian voyageurs, picked men, well mounted and armed only eight of the expedition driving wagons. Randolph Benton, a lad of twelve, Fremont's brother-in-law, was one of the number. The great event of this expedi- tion, so full of thrilling adventure, was the first ascent of that highest peak of the Wind River Mountains, now called Fremont's Peak, 13,570 feet in height. "We mounted the barometer in the snow of the summit," Fremont wrote, " and fixing a ramrod in the crevice, unfurled the national flag where never flag waved be- fore. . . . While we were sitting on the rock a solitary humble-bee came winging its flight from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men." They run a cafion in the Platte, singing a Canadian boat-song for all the peril. . . . Their boat is whirled over, food, ammunition, and valuable records lost. Climbing up and out of the cafion, they admire the scenery in spite of their forlornity. . . . cacti and bare feet, hunger and thirst. . . . but astronom- ical and barometrical observations and drawings are made, botanical specimens collected, and a mass of information, making the report of this expedition * what has been called the most enduring monument of Fremont's fame. The report was hailed in England as well as the United States, and was followed by an in- crease of the wagon-trains across the mountains via the South Pass. The first expedition was absent some six months. Fremont's Peak marks the western point of that journey. The next order from the Government sent Fremont, in the spring of 1843, to begin exploring where he had left off in 1842 ; to connect his survey with that of Commodore Wilkes on the Pacific coast. Kit Carson was again his guide; many of the previous expedition enlisted, 32 men in all. Across the forks of the Kansas the route lay west of Fort Laramie, through the Medicine Butte Pass and the South Pass to the northern end of Great Salt Lake. Fremont's report of
- Fremont's Oregon and California. (1849.)
