344 WORKMEN AND HEROES 4 this region led the Mormons to settle at Salt Lake afterward, believing they would be in Mexican territory. The record of this expedition, like the preceding one, is a story of fearful suffering and heroic endurance. It is given in detail in Fremont's " Memoirs," and Benton's "Thirty Years in the Senate." Deep snows on the mountains, no sign of the Buena Ventura River, Indians refusing to guide such a foolhardy venture; " skeleton men leading skeleton horses; " the descent into the Sacramento Valley at last, and the arrival at Fort Vancouver, November 1843, gives but a glimpse of the heroism of this second expedition. The suffer- ing endured in reaching the coast was as nothing to that of the return through the great valley between the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, looking for the river they were the first to prove did not exist at all. From San Francisco back to Salt Lake, three thousand five hundred miles in eight months, not once out of the sight of snow. Geography had gained an important fact the Colorado was the only river flowing from the Rocky Mountains on that part of the continent For eight months not a word had been heard from the party, at the East, and then Frdmont came home " thin as a shadow," and Mrs. Fremont could tell him that she might have prevented his going at all had she chosen, for an order from Washington, countermanding the expedition, had been received by her addressed to her husband, soon after his departure from St. Louis. The expedition was not too far away when the despatch came for her to get it to him, but she decided to withhold it. Because he had taken a mountain howitzer in his outfit he was or- dered to stay at home. What a scientific expedition could want of a howitzer was not plain to the authorities, who seemed to think that hostile Indians knew at sight the difference between a military and a scientific party and would respect it. Mrs. Fremont tells the story in The Century for March, 1891, how she not only did not send on the despatch, but a messenger instead, bidding Frdmont " Go on at once without asking why," so fearful was she a duplicate order might defeat his going at all. General Scott was Commander in Chief of our Army in 1845. At his in- stance Lieutenant Fremont was made captain in the United States Army, and in the fall of that year was sent by the Government on another expedition . . . this time to find the best road to the Pacific coast Trouble with Mexico was growing fast. Our southwestern territory needed looking after; the northwest- ern of Mexico as well. Fremont was to follow the Arkansas River to its source in the Rocky Mountains, explore the Great Basin, the Cascades, and the Sierra Nevada, and define a route in a southern latitude for emigrants. Kit Carson was among the sixty men of this party, and several veterans of the two former expedi- tions. They struck out for the Sierra by the way of the Humboldt River. The war with Mexico broke out soon after their departure. It was another story of fearful hardship the Sacramento Valley was reached at last, and Frdmont hastened to Monterey to get permission from the Mexican authorities to make a scientific exploration of the region. His request was granted, and permission given to replenish his exhausted supplies. Why the Gov- ernment revoked this permission almost as soon as granted, ordering him and his
