"'The government deserves credit for the zeal with which it has pursued geographical discovery.' Such is the remark which a leading paper made upon the discoveries of Fremont, on his return from his second expedition to the great West; and such is the remark which all writers will make upon all his discoveries who write history from public documents and outside views. With all such writers the expeditions of Fremont will be credited to the zeal of the government for the promotion of science, as if the government under which he acted had conceived and planned these expeditions, as Mr. Jefferson did that of Lewis and Clark, and then selected this young officer to carry into effect the instructions delivered to him. How far such history would be true in relation to the first expedition, which terminated in the Rocky Mountains, has been seen in the account which has been given of the origin of that undertaking, and which leaves the government innocent of its conception; and, therefore, not entitled to the credit of its authorship, but only to the merit of permitting it. In the second, and greater expedition, from which great political as well as scientific results have flowed, their merit is still less; for, while equally innocent of its conception, they were not equally passive to its performance—countermanding the expedition after it had begun—and lavishing censure upon the adventurous young explorer for his manner of undertaking it. The fact was, that his first expedition barely finished, Mr. Fremont sought and obtained orders for a second one, and was on the frontier of Missouri with his command when orders arrived at St. Louis to stop him, on the ground that he had made a military equipment which the peaceful nature of his geographical pursuit did not require! as if Indians did not kill and rob scientific men as well as others if not in a condition to defend themselves. The particular point of complaint was that he had taken a small mountain howitzer, in addition to his rifles; and which he was informed, was charged to him, although it had been furnished upon a regular requisition on the commandant of the arsenal at St. Louis, approved by the commander of the military department (Colonel, afterward General Kearney). Mr. Fremont had left St. Louis, and was at the frontier, Mrs. Fremont being requested to examine the letters that came after him, and forward those which he ought to receive. She read the countermanding orders and detained them! and Fremont knew nothing of their existence, until after he had returned from one of the most marvellous and eventful expeditions of modern times—one to which the United States are indebted (among other things) for the present ownership of California, instead of seeing it a British possession. The writer of this View, who was then in St. Louis, approved of the course which his daughter had taken (for she had stopped the orders before he knew it); and he wrote a letter to the department condemning the recall, repulsing the reprimand which had been lavished upon Fremont, and demanding a court-martial for him when he should return. The Secretary of War was then Mr. James Madison Porter, of Pennsylvania; the chief of the topographical corps the same as now (Colonel Abert), himself an office man, surrounded by West Point officers, to whose pursuit of easy service, Fremont's adventurous expeditions was a reproach; and in conformity to whose opinions the secretary seemed to have acted. On Fremont's return, upwards of a year afterwards, Mr. William Wilkins, of Pennsylvania, was Secretary of War, and received the young explorer with all honor and friendship, and obtained for him the brevet of captain from President Tyler. And such is the inside view of this piece of history—very different from what documentary evidence would make it.
"To complete his survey across the continent, on the line of travel between the State of Missouri and the tide-water region of the Columbia, was Fremont's object in this expedition; and it was all that he had obtained orders for doing; but only a small part, and to his mind an insignificant part, of what he proposed doing. People had been to the mouth of the Columbia before, and his ambition was not limited to making tracks where others had made them before him. There was a vast region beyond the Rocky Mountains—the whole western slope of our continent—of which but little was known; and of that little, nothing with the accuracy of science. All that vast region, more than seven hundred miles square—equal to a great kingdom in Europe—was an unknown land—a sealed book, which he longed to open, and to read. Leaving the frontier of Missouri in May, 1843, and often diverging from his route for the sake of expanding his field of observation, he had arrived in the tide-water region of Columbia in the month of November; and had then completed the whole service which his orders embraced. He might then have returned upon his tracks, or been brought home by sea, or hunted the most pleasant path for getting back; and if he had been a routine officer, satisfied with fulfilling an order, he would have done so. Not so the young explorer, who held his diploma from nature, and not from the United States Military Academy. He was at Fort Vancouver, guest of the hospitable Dr. McLaughlin, Governor of the British Hudson Bay Fur Company; and obtained from him all possible information upon his intended line of return—faithfully given, but which proved to be disastrously erroneous in its leading and governing feature. A southeast route to cross the great unknown region diagonally through its heart (making a line from the Lower Columbia to the Upper Colorado of the Gulf of California), was his line of return; twenty-five men (the same who had come with him from the United States) and a hundred horses were his equipment; and the commencement of winter the time of starting—all without a guide, relying upon their guns for support; and, in the last resort, upon their horses—such as should give out! for one that could carry a man, or a pack, could not be spared for food.
"All the maps up to that time had shown this region traversed from east to west—from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—by a great river called the Buena Ventura: which may be translated, the Good Chance. Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course. Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it. As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would collect and shelter, when the snows and freezing winds drove them from the plains; and with these animals to live on, and grass for the horses, and wood for fires, he expected to avoid suffering, if not to enjoy comfort, during his solitary sojourn in that remote and profound wilderness.
"He proceeded—soon encountered deep snows which impeded progress upon the highlands—descended into a low country to the left (afterwards known to be the Great Basin, from which no water issues to any sea)—skirted an enormous chain of mountain on the right, luminous with glittering white snow—saw strange Indians, who mostly fled—found a desert—no Buena Ventura; and death from cold and famine staring him in the face. The failure to find the river, or tidings of it, and the possibility of its existence seeming to be forbid by the structure of the country, and hybernation in the inhospitable desert being impossible, and the question being that of life and death, some new plan of conduct became indispensable. His celestial observations told him that he was in the latitude of the Bay of San Francisco, and only seventy miles from it. But what miles! up and down that snowy mountain which the Indians told him no men could cross in the winter—which would have snow upon it as deep as the trees, and places where people would slip off and fall half a mile at a time—a fate which actually befell a mule, packed with the precious burden of botanical specimens, collected along a travel of two thousand miles. No reward could induce an Indian to become a guide in the perilous adventure of crossing this mountain. All recoiled and fled from the adventure. It was attempted without a guide—in the dead of winter—accomplished in forty days—the men and surviving horses—a woeful procession, crawling along one by one; skeleton men leading skeleton horses—and arriving at Sutter's Settlement in the beautiful valley of the Sacramento; and where a genial warmth, and budding flowers, and trees in foliage, and grassy ground, and flowing streams, and comfortable food, made a fairy contrast with the famine and freezing they had encountered, and the lofty Sierra Nevada which they had climbed. Here he rested and recruited; and from this point, and by way of Monterey, the first tidings were heard of the party since leaving Fort Vancouver.
"Another long progress to the south, skirting the western base of the Sierra Nevada, made him acquainted with the noble valley of the San Joaquin, counterpart to that of the Sacramento; when crossing through a gap, and turning to the left, he skirted the Great Basin; and by many deviations from the right line home, levied incessant contributions to science from expanded lands, not described before. In this eventful exploration, all the great features of the western slope of our continent were brought to light—the Great Salt Lake, the Utah Lake, the Little Salt Lake; at all which places, then deserts, the Mormons now are; the Sierra Nevada, then solitary in the snow, now crowded with Americans, digging gold from its flanks: the beautiful valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin, then alive with wild horses, elk, deer, and wild fowls, now smiling with American cultivation; the Great Basin itself and its contents; the Three Parks; the approximation of the great rivers which, rising together in the central region of the Rocky Mountains, go off east and west, towards the rising and the setting sun—all these, and other strange features of a new region, more Asiatic than American, were brought to light and revealed to public view in the results of this exploration.
"Eleven months he was never out of sight of snow; and sometimes, freezing with cold, would look down upon a sunny valley, warm with genial heat;—sometimes panting with the summer's heat, would look up at the eternal snows which crowned the neighboring mountain. But it was not then that California was secured to the Union—to the greatest power of the New World—to which it of right belonged; but it was the first step towards the acquisition, and the one that led to it. The second expedition led to a third, just in time to snatch the golden California from the hands of the British, ready to clutch it. But of this hereafter. Fremont's second expedition was now over. He had left the United States a fugitive from his government, and returned with a name that went over Europe and America, and with discoveries bearing fruit which the civilized world is now enjoying."
On their homeward-bound journey, the party followed up the valley of the San Joaquin crossing over the Sierra Nevada and coast range of mountains at a point where they join and form a beautiful low pass. They continued on from here close under the coast range until they struck the Spanish Trail. This they followed to the Mohave River. That stream, it will be recollected, was an old friend of Kit Carson's. The reader will recall the many times he had caught beaver out of its waters. They followed the trail up the course of the river to where it leaves it. At this point an event occurred which somewhat retarded their progress, relieving the monotony of the route and somewhat changing their plans.
Soon after the camp had been formed, they were visited by a Mexican man and boy; the one named Andreas Fuentes, the other Pablo Hernandez. They informed Fremont that they belonged to a party of Mexican traders which had come from New Mexico. They said that six of them, including in this number two women who acted as cooks, had been left by their friends in charge of a band of horses. The rest of the party were absent trafficking. The party of six thus left to watch the horses, consisted of Santiago Giacome, Andreas Fuentes and wife, and Pablo Hernandez, together with his father and mother. They were endeavoring to find better grazing for their animals. For this purpose they had penetrated the country as far as they dared; and, at about eighty miles from the camp of Fremont, had resolved to wait for their friends. Fuentes and the boy Pablo were on guard over the animals when their camp was attacked by hostile savages. The attacking band was about thirty in number.
Their principal object was to seize the horses. To effect this the more easily, they saluted the little band with a flight of arrows as they advanced. Fuentes and Pablo now heard Giacome warning them to start the horses and run for it. Both were mounted. They obeyed the directions of Giacome and with the entire band of horses charged boldly into the midst of the Indians regardless of their weapons. The charge succeeded in breaking their line, through which Fuentes and Pablo boldly dashed after their animals. The Indians deferred the chase to attend to a more bloody purpose. Having put sixty miles between them and the site of the attack, they left their horses and started in search of their main body. This search led them into Fremont's camp. Fuentes feared that the worst had overtaken his wife. Pablo already looked upon himself as an orphan boy. He doubted not that the bloody savages had murdered both his father and mother. It was a sad picture to witness their grief. But Kit Carson could not do so unmoved. The heart of such grief has ever awakened his earnest sympathy. His sympathy, too, has never been of a wordy nature. He volunteered to go with Fuentes and make an attempt to deliver the captives, if such they should prove, or to avenge their death, if that became the sad alternative.
Fuentes had left the horses at a spring of water, well known to Carson. There he had found signs of white men which had led him into Fremont's camp. There was no difficulty for Carson to find the spring. The whole company therefore traveled to the spring, which they reached early the next morning, distant about thirty miles from their last camp. The horses were not to be seen. A short examination of signs soon revealed to Carson and Godey that the two Mexicans had been followed by the Indians and that they had come upon the horses shortly after they had left them. Of course therefore they had captured and driven them off.