Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/263

 the expedition to the banks of its affluent, the Sweet Water River, which flows in a gentle descent from the most picturesque gorge of the Rocky Mountains, now called the South Pass, but then practically unknown to the white man. Now climbing some rugged height, now pausing to rest on the banks of the river, the gigantic ridge called the Devil's Gate was left behind, and on the 7th August the South Pass itself was entered.

Instead of the arduous climb associated as a matter of course with the scaling of the Rocky Mountains, Fremont now found himself ascending a sandy plain, which brought him, imperceptibly as it were, to the primal home of many a river flowing into the Pacific. The watershed—as unique in its character as the swamps which nurse the infancy of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence—left behind, Fremont led his little band up a long and beautiful ravine, discovering, a few miles further on, a lake "set like a gem in the mountains."

The newly-found sheet of water, which was ascertained to be the source of one branch of the Colorado of the West, was named Mountain Lake; and the instructions of the Government having now been fully carried out, it was resolved to return eastward. Before sounding the retreat, however, Fremont noticed a lofty mountain peak in the vicinity of the South Pass, and resolved to ascend it. This turned out to be a matter of considerable difficulty. First the mules were left behind, then boots and stockings were discarded, the use of the toes being absolutely necessary to the advance of the climbers.

Fremont himself was the first to reach the summit. Availing himself of a kind of comb of the mountain, he gained a point with an overhanging buttress, round which he crept, putting hands and feet in the crevices between the blocks, and often hanging over a vertical precipice several hundred feet deep, where a moment's giddiness would have been fatal. At last he stood, to quote his own words, "on a narrow crest about three feet in width, with an inclination of about 20° N., 51° E.;" and though he did not know it then, he had reached the highest point of the great Rocky Mountain Range, 13,590 feet above the sea-level—a point still known, in honor of its discoverer, as Fremont's Peak.

As he paused to rest, and gazed down upon the lovely view at his feet, stretching away to the shores of the Pacific, Fremont relates that a solitary bee came flying up from the eastern valley, and settled on the knee of one of the men, "A moment's thought," he adds, "would have made us let