SOUTH PASS AND FREMONT’S PEAK.
JOHN C. FREMONT.
[Captain John Charles Fremont, one of the earliest government explorers of the Rocky Mountain region and the Pacific slope, was born at Savannah, Georgia, in 1813. Becoming a civil engineer in the government service, in 1842 he explored the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, ascending in August the highest peak in the Wind River range. This has since been known as Fremont’s Peak. In the following year he explored Great Salt Lake. In 1845 he led a third expedition to the Pacific, and during the Mexican war was instrumental in securing California for the United States. He led subsequent expeditions westward, was Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1856, served during the war, and in 1878-82 was governor of Arizona. He died in 1890. We subjoin his account of the crossing of the South Pass and discovery and ascent of Fremont’s Peak.]
The view [of the Wind River Mountains] dissipated in a moment the pictures which had been created in our minds by many travellers who have compared these mountains with the Alps in Switzerland, and speak of the glittering peaks which rise in icy majesty amidst the eternal glaciers nine or ten thousand feet into the region of eternal snows.
[Continuing their course, they encamped on August 7 near the South Pass, and the next morning set out for the dividing ridge.]
About six miles from our encampment brought us to the summit. The ascent had been so gradual that, with all the intimate knowledge possessed by Carson, who had made the country his home for seventeen years, we were obliged to watch very closely to find the place at which we reached the culminating point. This was between two low hills, rising on either hand fifty or sixty feet. When I looked back at them, from the foot of the immediate slope on the western plain, their summits appeared to be about one hundred and twenty feet above. From the impression on my mind at this time, and subsequently on our return, I should compare the elevation which we mounted immediately at the Pass to the ascent of the Capitol hill from the avenue at Washington. It is difficult for me to fix positively the breadth of this pass. From the broken ground where it commences, at the foot of the White River chain, the view to the southeast is over a champaign country, broken, at the distance of nineteen miles, by the Table Rock, which, with the other isolated hills in its vicinity, seem to stand in a comparative plain. This I judged to be its termination, the ridge recovering its rugged character with the Table Rock.
It will be seen that it in no manner resembles the places to which the term is commonly applied,—nothing of the gorge-like character and winding ascents of the Alleghany passes in America; nothing of the Great St. Bernard and Simplon passes in Europe. Approaching it from the mouth of the Sweet Water, a sandy plain, one hundred and twenty miles long, conducts, by a gradual and regular ascent, to the summit, about seven thousand feet above the sea; and the traveller, without being reminded of any change by toilsome ascents, suddenly finds himself on the waters which flow to the Pacific Ocean. By the route we had travelled, the distance from Fort Laramie is three hundred and twenty miles, or nine hundred and fifty from the mouth of the Kansas.
[They continued their course westward, crossing several tributaries of the Colorado River, and on the 10th reached unexpectedly a beautiful lake.]