For most of the way Fremont's wagons only followed in the track of those that had gone before them, sometimes with guides, but oftener without them. The road was plain, and led over ground where vehicles pass everywhere with ease, except when gullies or streams cross their path. So Fremont's men journeyed on quite at their ease. At nightfall the wagons were drawn together in a circle, thus forming an enclosed and barricaded camp, in which the travellers pitched their tents.
Fremont went up the Kansas valley as far as the Big Blue, crossing thence over to the Platte, which was now to be his guide for the rest of his journey.
FORT LARAMIE.
Now and then Fremont would come across the abandoned camp of some Oregon emigrants, who thus seemed piloting him on, instead of he them.
At the forks of the Platte the party was divided, Fremont himself going down the South Fork, to St. Vrain's Fort,[4] while the rest kept on up the North Fork, to Fort Laramie,[5] where Fremont presently joined them again.
When firewood grew scarce the men would have to make their fires of dried buffalo-dung, as the Arabs of the desert do with that of the camel.
At Laramie, Fremont learned that the mountains beyond swarmed with Indians, who were out on the war-path, and had declared the road shut to the whites. But Fremont went on to the South Pass, which was found to rise by so gradual an ascent that the exploring party hardly knew when they had reached its summit.
In the valley beyond this pass, the explorers rested. Before turning back, Fremont himself, with a few others, made their way into the mountains and up to the summit of the high peak now known by his name, which rose, the monarch of all in this region, 13,570 feet above the sea. In this way the three greatest landmarks of the Rockies make memorable the names of three explorers, Pike, Long and Fremont.