FREMONT'S SECOND EXPEDITION.
"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 Frémont, 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 Frémont 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. Frémont 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, afterwards General Kearney). Mr. Frémont had left St.
Louis, and was at the frontier, Mrs. Frémont 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 Frémont 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 of it); and he
wrote a letter to the department condemning the recall, repulsing
the reprimand which had been lavished upon Frémont, and demanding a
court-martial for him when he should return. The Secretary at War
was then Mr. James Madison Porter, of Pennsylvania; the chief of the
Topographical corps the same as now (Colonel Aberts), himself an
office man, surrounded by West Point officers, to whose pursuit of
easy service Frémont's adventurous expeditions was a reproach; and
in conformity to whose opinions the secretary seemed to have acted.
On Frémont's return, upwards of a year afterwards, Mr. William
Wilkins, of Pennsylvania, was Secretary at 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 Frémont'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 with out 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. Frémont 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 high lands--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 woful procession, crawling along one by
one: skeleton men leading skeleton horses--and arriving at Suter'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
desert, 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. That 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. Frémont'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.