Savannah (1813) while his parents were on a journey through the South. His father died soon after, and his mother went to live in Charleston, South Carolina.

After a time at a good school, Fremont entered the junior class in Charleston College (1828). After leaving America college he spent two and a half years on a voyage to South America.

Goes to
South

On his return he joined a company of engineers sent by a civil the governor to explore the mountains between South engineer Carolina and Tennessee, in order to find a suitable place

Becomes

for a railroad. This work was through a region rough, wild, and full of beauty. It gave young Fremont a taste for exploration which never left him.

Fremont's longing for a wild life was gratified when he was made assistant to a famous Frenchman who was exploring the wild region between the upper Missouri River and Canada.

After this work Fremont returned to Washington and

later married Jessie Benton, the daughter of the senator Marries from Missouri. Thomas H. Benton was a great friend Senator of President Jackson.

Fremont was now related to

a powerful man who was deeply interested in the growth of the "Great West." Benton's repeated speeches on the "West" and on the "Oregon Country" called attention to the importance of the Pacific slope.

JOHN C. FREMONT

Benton's daughter

Receives permis

sion to

In 1842 Fremont, now a lieutenant of engineers, received permission from the government to explore the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains. With a party made up largely of explore French Canadians, and assisted by that famous guide, South Kit Carson, he passed up the Kansas River, crossed to the Platte, went up this river, and thus reached the South Pass.

Pass

the Stars

145. On the Watershed. Standing on the watershed of a continent, he saw the beginnings of rivers that flow Unfurls into the Atlantic, and of others that stretched away and through unknown regions to the Pacific. He took four Stripes men and climbed what has since been called Fremonts on FrePeak, one of the highest of the Rockies, about 13,800 feet above the sea. At the top Fremont unfurled the Stars and Stripes in all its glory!

146. A Pathway to the Pacific. Fremont reported his discovery at Washington and immediately applied for orders to make an expedition to discover a more southerly route to California and Oregon.

monts

Peak

Beholds

Great

Salt Lake

He left the little town of Kansas City with his guide, Kit Carson, in May, 1843. In September, after traveling seventeen hundred miles,

the little party beheld the I shores of Great Salt Lake. What feelings must have stirred the breasts of men shut in for months by mountains, at seeing what appeared to be an ocean, here in the midst of a continent! Little did they dream of that hardy band of immigrants, so soon to follow, who would make the shores of this sea blossom like a garden. Fremont wrote: "As we looked over that vast expanse of water and strained our eyes along the silent shores, over which hung so much doubt and uncertainty, I could hardly repress the almost irresistible desire to continue our exploration."

OF RIVERS

After making preparations, the party crossed over to a branch of the Columbia River.

Down this stream

Reaches they traveled until

Fort Van- Fort Vancouver

couver

was reached on

November 4. Here

Fremont was the

FREMONT'S MEN BUILDING A FIRE IN THE SNOW

guest of the governor of the British Hudson Bay Company. November 10, on the way home, the little party started

to make the circuit of the Great Basin, a vast depression beyond the east wall of the Sierra Nevada. But very

soon they found deep snow on the mountains. Turning to the west at about the latitude of San Francisco, Fremont determined to cross the Sierra Nevada into the valley of the Sacramento. The river was not many miles distant. But what miles! Up and down, up and down that snowy

mountain range, which the Indians

told him no man could cross in winter, with snow lying upon it as deep as the dark forest trees were high, and places where, if a man slipped off, he would fall half a mile without stopping!

They attempted to cross without a guide, in the dead of winter. In forty days the men and the surviving horses-a woeful procession crawling along one by one, skeleton men leading skeleton horses-arrived at In the Sutter's Fort (Sacramento) in the beautiful valley of the Valley of Sacramento. Here genial warmth, trees in foliage, ramento grassy ground, and flowers made a fairy contrast to the famine and freezing they had met on the mountains they had climbed.

the Sac

Sees the
Mohave
Desert

End of

second expedition

After enjoying the hospitality of Colonel Sutter, Fremont again crossed the mountains farther to the south, where the beautiful San Joaquin River makes a gap or pass.

When he reached the top of the pass Fremont beheld the plains of the Mohave Desert. An Indian said to him: "There is neither water nor grass-nothing; every animal that goes upon them dies."

Pushing forward with great energy, he reached Utah Lake, thus having nearly made the circuit of the Great Basin.

Fremont hastened to Washington with the story of his discoveries. General Scott now recommended that he be made captain.

Fremont's third expedition, with Carson as a helper, Third ex- began in the spring of 1845, and aimed to explore the Great Basin and the coast of California and Oregon.

pedition

THE UNFURLING OF THE AMERICAN FLAG IN CALIFORNIA
The Stars and Stripes were raised for the first time in
California near Monterey in 1846

147. In the Mexican War. Little did Fremont-or any of his menthink what fortune had in store for them. On his way to the Oregon Country Fremont received news that the Mexicans were planning to kill all the Americans in the Sacramento Valley. War had