[The earlier explorations of Frémont through the Rocky Mountains and into California—those of 1842, 1843, and 1845—were made under the direction and at the expense of the United States Government, and of these we have full reports. Far less is known of the fourth expedition, which he made in 1848-49, at private expense.
The following article is made up of the records and diary of a member of the party, and left at his death.
As far as Pueblo, on the Arkansas River, at the entrance to the Rocky Mountains, this party followed very nearly the same line taken by the expedition of 1844, which in the main follows the present route of railway travel on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé line. The experiences of the party in their slow progress over the plains—their encounters with Indians, buffaloes, elk, antelopes, and wild horses—are not unique, and will, therefore, be omitted. We take up the diary where the old trail is left and the party plunges into the unknown mazes of the Rockies under the guidance of one of the trappers, named Bill Williams,—of a type which has long passed out of existence,—and who is thus described:]
Bill Williams was the most successful trapper in the mountains, and the best acquainted with the ways and habits of the wild tribes among and near whom he spent his adventurous life. He first came to the West as a sort of missionary to the Osages. But "Old Bill" laid aside his Christianity and took up his rifle and came to the mountains He was full of oddities in appearance, manner, conversation, and actions. He generally went out alone into the mountains, and would remain there trapping by himself for several months together, his lonely camps being often pitched in the vicinity of hostile savages. But he was as well versed in stratagem as they, and though he bore the marks of balls and arrows, he was a terror to them in single fight.
He was a dead shot with a rifle, though he always shot with a "double wabble"; he never could hold his gun still, yet his ball went always to the spot on a single shot. Though a most indefatigable walker, he never could walk on a straight line, but went staggering along, first on one side and then the other. He was an expert horseman; scarce a horse or mule could unseat him. He rode leaning forward upon the pommel, with his rifle before him, his stirrups ridiculously short, and his breeches rubbed up to his knees, leaving his legs bare even in freezing cold weather. He wore a loose monkey-jacket or a buckskin hunting-shirt, and for his head-covering a blanket-cap, the two top corners drawn up into two wolfish, satyr-like ears, giving him somewhat the appearance of the representations we generally meet with of his Satanic Majesty, at the same time rendering his tout ensemble exceedingly ludicrous. He was a perfect specimen of his kind, an embodiment of the reckless and extravagant propensity of the mountaineers, and he pursued his lucrative but perilous vocation from an innate love of its excitement and dangers. For twenty-one years he had lived in the mountains without returning to civilized life until he was taken back under guard, a year or two previous, by Captain Cook, for the offense of manœuvering and acting the Indian in his buckskin suit on the plains, thereby deceiving the captain into the belief that he was an Indian, and giving his men a fruitless chase of several miles over the prairies before they could overtake him on his pony, much to his diversion and the officer's chagrin.
Such was old Bill Williams—he who was destined to be our guide at this time. But it was not without some hesitation that he consented to go, for most of the old trappers at the pueblo declared that it was impossible to cross the mountains at that time; that the cold upon the mountains was unprecedented, and the snow deeper than they had ever known it so early in the year. However, Old Bill concluded to go, for he thought we could manage to get through, though not without considerable suffering.
On the 26th of November [1848] we entered the Rocky Mountains, which had been for days looming up before us, presenting to view one continuous sheet of snow. The snow already covered the mountains and was rapidly deepening. I have frequently since called to mind the expression of one of the men as we rode along before entering Hard Scrabble. As we looked upon the stormy mountain so portentous of the future, he said, "Friends, I don't want my bones to bleach upon those mountains." Poor fellow, little did he dream of what the future would be!
In the evening, from our first camp, eight miles in the mountains, several of us climbed to a high point to take a last look at the plains. The sight was beautiful; the snow-covered plain far beneath us stretching eastward as far as the eye could reach, while on the opposite side frowned the almost perpendicular wall of high mountains.
We entered the mountains on foot, packing our saddle-mules with corn to sustain the animals. We traveled on, laboring through the deep snow on the rugged mountain range, passing successively through what are called White Mountain Valley and Wet Mountain Valley into Grand River Valley. The cold was intense, and storms frequently compelled us to lie in camp, from the impossibility of forcing the mules against them. A number of the men were frozen; the animals became exhausted from the inclemency of the weather and want of food, what little grass there was being all buried in the snow. As we proceeded matters grew worse and worse. The mules gave out one by one and dropped down in the trail, and their packs were placed upon the saddle-mules. The cold became more and more intense, so many degrees below zero that the mercury sank entirely into the bulb. The breath would freeze upon the men's faces and their lips become so stiff from the ice that it was almost impossible to speak; the long beard and hair stood out white and stiff with the frost. The aspect of the mules was as bad as that of the men; their eyelashes and the long beard about their mouths were frozen stiff, and their breath settled upon their breasts and sides until they were perfectly white with frost. The snow, too, would clog under their hoofs until it formed a ball six inches long, making them appear as though they were walking on stilts. With the deep snow around us, and the pendant frost upon the leafless trees, Nature and ourselves presented a very harmonious picture. Two trappers, Old Bill informed us, had been frozen to death here the year previous.
After coming through Robideaux's Pass, which was exceedingly difficult, we descended into Grand River Valley. The snow lay deep, as elsewhere, and there was no sign of vegetation. One broad, white, dreary-looking plain lay before us, bounded by lofty white mountains. The Rio Grande lay fifty miles ahead, so we determined to get through the snow-covered plain as quickly as possible. We traveled late and camped in the middle of it, without any shelter from the winds, and with no fuel but some wild sage, a small shrub which grew sparsely around. At night the thermometer stood at seventeen degrees below zero. During the day Ducatel, a young fellow in the company, had come very near freezing to death. By collecting a quantity of the sage we made sufficient fire to cook, or rather half-cook, our supper of deer meat, five deer having been killed that evening by two of the men. Bolting down the half-cooked meat, we quickly turned into our blankets in order to keep tolerably warm and to protect ourselves against the driving snow, for since leaving the States we had scarcely stretched our tents. In the night, as ill luck would have it, our mules, poor creatures, which had stood shivering in the cold with bowed backs and drooping heads, suffering from their exposed situation and half-starved, being now reduced to a pint of corn twice a day, and having no other resource for food, broke loose from their weak fastenings of sage bushes and started off en masse on the back trail. As soon as it was ascertained that they were gone, in the middle of the night, we had to rise from our beds, lifting half a foot of snow with our top blankets, and strike out in pursuit of them. We overtook them several miles from camp, and, taking them back, made them secure. But we rested little the remainder of the night.