We find the following incident of placing the American flag on the
highest point of the Rocky Mountains, in "Col. Fremont's Narrative:"
We managed to get our mules up to a little bench about a hundred feet
above the lakes, where there was a patch of good grass, and turned them
loose to graze. During our rough ride to this place, they had exhibited
a wonderful surefootedness. Parts of the defile were filled with
angular, sharp fragments of rock, three or four and eight or ten feet
cube; and among these they had worked their way leaping from one narrow
point to another, rarely making a false step, and giving us no occasion
to dismount. Having divested ourselves of every unnecessary encumbrance,
we commenced the ascent. This time, like experienced travelers, we did
not press ourselves, but climbed leisurely, sitting down so soon as we
found breath beginning to fail. At intervals, we readied places where a
number of springs gushed from the rocks, and, about 1800 feet above the
lakes, came to the snow line. From this point, our progress was
uninterrupted climbing. Hitherto, I had worn a pair of thick moccasins,
with soles of _parfleche_, but here I put on a light, thin pair, which I
had brought for the purpose, as now the use of our toes became necessary
to a further advance. I availed myself of a sort of comb of the
mountain, which stood against the wall like a buttress, and which the
wind and the solar radiation, joined to the steepness of the smooth
rock, had kept almost entirely free from snow. Up this, I made my way
rapidly. Our cautious method of advancing, at the outset, had spared my
strength; and, with the exception of a slight disposition to headache,
I felt no remains of yesterday's illness, In a few minutes we reached a
point where the buttress was overhanging, and there was no other way of
surmounting the difficulty than by passing around one side of it, which
was the face of a vertical precipice of several hundred feet.
Putting hands and feet in the crevices between the blocks, I succeeded
in getting over it, and, when I reached the top, found my companions in
a small valley below. Descending to them, we continued climbing, and in
a short time reached the crest. I sprang upon the summit, and another
step would have precipitated me into an immense snow field, five hundred
feet below. To the edge of this field was a sheer icy precipice; and
then, with a gradual fall, the field sloped off for about a mile, until
it struck the foot of another lower ridge. I stood on a narrow crest,
about three feet in width, with an inclination of about 20° N., 51° E.
As soon as I had gratified the first feelings of curiosity, I descended,
and each man ascended in his turn; for I would only allow one at a time
to mount the unstable and precarious slab, which, it seemed, a breath
would hurl into the abyss below. We mounted the barometer in the snow of
the summit, and, fixing a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national
flag to wave in the breeze, where flag never waved before.
[Illustration: OUR FLAG ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS.]
During our morning's ascent, we had met no sign of animal life, except
a small sparrow-like bird. A stillness the most profound, and a terrible
solitude, forced themselves constantly on the mind as the great features
of the place. Here, on the summit, where the stillness was absolute,
unbroken by any sound, and solitude complete, we thought ourselves
beyond the region of animated life; but, while we were sitting on the
rock, a solitary bee (_bromus, the humble-bee_) came winging his flight
from the eastern valley, and lit on the knee of one of the men.
It was a strange place, the icy rock and the highest peak of the Rocky
mountains, for a lover of warm sunshine and flowers; and we pleased
ourselves with the idea that he was the first of his species to cross
the mountain barrier--a solitary pioneer to foretell the advance of
civilization. I believe that a moment's thought would have made us let
him continue his way unharmed; but we carried out the law of this
country, where all animated nature seems at war; and, seizing him
immediately, put him in at least a fit place--in the leaves of a large
book, among the flowers we had collected on our way.