Explorers and Travellers

Reaching, in Southern Utah, the head-waters of the Virgin River, where Santa Fé trains usually halt to recruit the strength of their animals in its grassy meadows, Frémont was joined by the famous trapper, Joseph Walker, who consented to serve as guide in the departure to the northeastward, as they now quitted the Spanish trail. Frémont then skirted the eastern edge of the great interior basin and visiting Sevier and Utah Lakes, thus completed practically the circuit of the basin. He then turned eastward through the valleys of the Du Chesne and Green Rivers, tributaries to the Colorado, and pushing through the very heart of the Rocky Mountains, by the way of the pass near Leadville, at an elevation of eleven thousand two hundred feet, he reached the Arkansas Valley June 29, 1844.

His journey eastward across the great Kansas plains was of an easy character, and the 31st of July, 1844, saw his expedition safe at Independence, Mo. He had been absent fourteen months, during which time he had travelled some six thousand five hundred miles, the greater part of his journey being through the most barren and inhospitable regions of North America.

The character and extent of Frémont’s astronomical and other physical observations on this long, arduous, and dangerous journey constituted the great value of his exploring work. In few instances did it fall to Frémont’s lot to first explore any section of the country, but it was his good fortune, as it was his intent, to first contribute systematic, extended, and reliable data as to climate, elevation, physical conditions, and geographical positions. The hypsometrical work begun by Frémont culminated, indeed, in the unparalleled collation of elevations by Gannett; his climatic observations have been perfected by the Signal Corps; his astronomical and geological data have been overwhelmed by the magnificent collections and field work of the United States Coast and Geodetic and Geological Surveys; but it is to be noted that Frémont’s observations, which he gave in detail, were so honest and good that they have withstood successfully the test of hostile examination. Frémont’s scientific spirit was strikingly exemplified in this terrible mid-winter journey through the mountains of Nevada, when observations for time, latitude, elevation, or temperature were daily and regularly made despite snow, extreme cold, and physical weakness from semi-starvation.

On the recommendation of General Winfield Scott, in a special report, the unprecedented honor of double brevets – of first lieutenant and captain – was conferred on Frémont for gallant and highly meritorious services in connection with these two expeditions.

Frémont’s third expedition consisted of sixty men. They left Bent’s Fort, on the Arkansas, August 16, 1845. Its object, as far as exploration was concerned, included a survey of the head-waters of the Arkansas, Rio Grande, and Rio Colorado, the basin of the Great Salt Lake and the practicable passes of the Cascade and southern Sierra Nevada.

It was during this journey that Frémont quite fully surveyed the southern shores of Salt Lake. The water was then at an unusually low – possibly at its lowest known – level, and having been informed by the Indians that it was fordable to Antelope Island, Frémont with Kit Carson rode to the island, the water nowhere reaching above the saddle-girths of their horses.

Dividing his party Frémont crossed the Utah desert between the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth parallels, while his subordinate, Walker, explored the valley and sink of the Humboldt. Rendezvousing at Lake Walker and again separating, Frémont reached Sutter’s Fort through the American River route, while Walker and the main party crossed the Sierras into the extreme southern part of the San Joaquin Valley, opposite Tulare Lake. Of the survey and explorations made by the expedition it may be briefly said that they added very greatly to a knowledge of Upper California, and resulted in the publication in 1848 of the most accurate map of that region extant.

There was, however, another and more important phase to the third expedition than that of mere exploration. Frémont before leaving Washington was informed that war with Mexico was possible, and received general unwritten instructions looking to such a contingency. The forecast of trouble proved correct, and the preliminary and extensive disturbances in California interfered most materially with the progress of his surveys. Frémont’s explorations westward of the Arkansas River had been through and over Mexican territory. In order to place himself in proper position as a non-invader he proceeded to Monterey, Cal., at the earliest practicable moment and applied to the commanding general, Don José Castro, for permission to extend, in the interests of science and commerce, the geographical survey of the nearest route between the United States and the Pacific Ocean. The request was granted promptly and courteously. Scarcely had Frémont commenced his survey in Northern California than he was peremptorily ordered by General Castro, who later appears to have been acting under orders from the Mexican Government, to quit the department; the message being coupled with an intimation that non-compliance would result in expulsion by an armed force. The message was delivered in such manner and language as incensed Frémont and caused him to peremptorily refuse. Withdrawing a short distance he erected a stockade and awaited expulsion by arms. The Mexican force made several forward movements, but carefully avoided an attack. Frémont finally judged it advisable to quit Mexican territory, as his remaining might be detrimental to the United States. He consequently withdrew slowly toward Oregon, surveying and exploring as he moved northward.

On May 7, 1845, Frémont was overtaken in the valley of the upper Sacramento by Lieutenant Archibald H. Gillespie, of the marine corps, who brought from Washington important despatches which were destined to settle the fate of California as a Mexican state. Frémont was informed through Gillespie that war with Mexico had been declared, that the government counted upon him to ascertain and conciliate the disposition of the people of California toward the United States, and especially to conserve American interests by ascertaining and counteracting any scheme looking to the cession of California to Great Britain. Frémont was then surrounded by hostile Klamaths, who killed several of his party and with whom he had several engagements, which resulted in the destruction of the principal village, fishing appliances, etc., of the offending tribe.

Frémont, turning promptly southward, his heart set on the important mission intrusted to him, saved from ravage the American settlements in the valley of the Sacramento, which were in imminent danger of destruction between the proclamation of the Mexican authorities ordering confiscation and expulsion and the threatening attitude of the Indian allies, incited by unscrupulous officials to activity. Aided by volunteers from the American settlers Frémont freed California permanently from Mexican domination, his actions receiving mention and approval from the President in his Annual Message to Congress, in December, 1846.

Commodore Stockton, United States Navy, charged with the control of affairs on the Pacific Coast, appointed Frémont Governor and military commander of California. When controversies arose between Commodore Stockton, of the navy, and General Kearney, of the army, each having authority from Washington to conquer California and organize its government, Frémont adhered to Stockton, his first commander. In consequence serious complications arose, which finally resulted in the trial of Frémont, and, although the findings of the court were partly disapproved and the sentence remitted, he resigned from the army.

His courage, persistency, and success in these expeditions gained for Frémont world-wide reputation. At home he was named The Pathfinder; abroad he received the Founders’ Medal from the Royal Geographical Society of England and many other well-deserved marks of appreciation from geographers.

Devoted to California and to its exploration Frémont immediately fitted out, at his own expense, another expedition, the fourth. In October, 1848, with thirty-three men and a large train he crossed the Rocky Mountains, undeterred by his fearful experiences in 1844, and again attempted the passage of the snow-covered Sierras in mid-winter. The snow was deep, the guide inefficient, and the winter unusually cold. One-third of his men and all his animals perished after suffering cold, hunger, and fatigue of the most appalling character, and the remnant of the expedition returned to Santa Fé. Unappalled by this overwhelming disaster Frémont reorganized at Santa Fé a new party, and after a long, perilous journey reached Sacramento in the spring of 1849.

Frémont’s experiences during his surveys of the great valleys of the San Joaquin and Sacramento caused him to fall under the fascinating spell which California exercises over the greater number of its Eastern settlers. The vast domain of its virgin forests, the luxuriance of its vegetation, the extent and fertility of its valley lands, and its incomparable climate were speedily recognized by Frémont as so many physical conditions calculated to insure unparalleled prosperity when once it should be occupied by Americans. He saw this vast region practically a waste; its magnificent harbors unvexed, unbroken by the keels of commerce; its unrivalled valleys awaiting the hand of intelligent labor to transform them from mere pastures for scattered herds of cattle into fruitful granaries, orchards, and vineyards capable of feeding a continent. Imbued with these ideas he cast in his lot with California, and was a potent power in making it a free State, and was honored by election as its first Senator, unfortunately, however, drawing the short term in the United States Senate.

Failing, through the defeat of his party, of re-election, Frémont visited Europe for a brief and well-earned rest, which was broken by the authorization of Congress for a survey of a trans-continental railway, which awoke his dormant exploring spirit. Returning promptly to the United States he organized an expedition under private auspices, which started westward in September, 1853. He travelled by the central route through the mountains of Colorado, passing over the Sierra Blanca, through the Sandy Hill Pass and the valley of the Grand River. Turning southward into Utah and crossing the Sawatch Mountains, Frémont’s march brought him to the Sierra Nevada near the end of winter, and their passage was attempted near the thirty-seventh parallel. Thereof he writes: “I was prepared to find the Sierra here broad, rugged, and blocked with snow, and was not disappointed in my expectations.” The snow being impassable and food failing he made a detour of some seventy miles to the southward and reached the Kern River Valley through Walker Pass. The march entailed endless suffering and extreme privations on the party, which was pushed to the direst extremities to preserve life. They were often without food of any kind for an entire day and for many weeks had only the flesh of their emaciated and exhausted horses. The disastrous outcome of this expedition impaired Frémont’s reputation, it appearing, then as now, surprising that, aware by bitter experience of the impracticability of such a journey, he should have so timed his march as to be again overwhelmed by the dreadful winter snow of the Nevada range.

This sketch has in view the treatment neither of Frémont’s career as a soldier nor as a politician, which phases of his life, viewed by ordinary circumstances, may be considered as unsuccessful. It need not be here dwelt on that his name became a watchword of the ever-growing spirit of human freedom, and that as the standard-bearer of an idea he astonished the country and the world by obtaining the suffrages of nearly one and a half millions of his countrymen for the highest office in the gift of the people. His unwavering, if impractical, devotion to freedom was forcibly illustrated by his emancipation proclamation in Missouri, which he declined to recall, even at the request of the President who revoked it.

It is undoubted that Frémont’s non-success in business and political ventures has tended to diminish his reputation as an explorer, a reputation which, it is safe to say, must continue to grow steadily in the future with the development of the great trans-Rocky Mountain region to which he gave the enthusiasm of his youth, the maturity of his manhood, and for which he sacrificed his profession and his private fortune. While Frémont loved all the great West, it was to California especially that he gave the best he had of mind, heart, and body, never sparing himself in any effort for the upbuilding of her future. So it is that in the scene of his activities on the shores of the golden Pacific, rather than on the coast of the Atlantic, should be more appreciated the labors and ever grow brighter and brighter the name of John C. Frémont, the Pathfinder.

IX

ELISHA KENT KANE,

Arctic Explorer

Among the picturesque and striking figures of Arctic explorers none abides more firmly in the minds of Americans than that of Elisha Kent Kane, whose career and fame largely relate to the fate of the lost explorer, Sir John Franklin.

Kane was born in Philadelphia, February 3, 1820. In 1842 he graduated in medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the following year, while waiting for a vacancy in the medical corps of the navy, for which he had passed an examination, sailed on the frigate Brandywine, as physician to the embassy, to China, under Caleb Cushing, Minister Plenipotentiary. Later, commissioned as an officer of the medical corps of the United States Navy, he served on the west coast of Africa, in Brazil, in the Mediterranean, and on special duty with the army in Mexico. This brief statement of his duties conveys, however, no idea of the intense energy and restless activity of Kane in his eager efforts to acquire personal knowledge of the very ends of the earth.

Indeed, considering Kane’s very short life (he died at thirty-seven), there is no man of modern times to whom the words of Tennyson, in his strong poem of Ulysses, more fittingly apply:

“I cannot rest from travel, …For always roaming with a hungry heartMuch have I seen and known: cities of menAnd manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least but honored of them all.”

Suffice it here to say that before Kane was thirty he had visited in America the greater part of the eastern half of the United States, the city of Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to the eastern Andes; in Africa, along the Gold and Slave Coasts, to Dahomey, Cape Colony, and up the Nile to the Second Cataract; in Europe, the eastern, southern, and central countries; in Asia, the coast of China, Ceylon, India from Bombay to the Himalayas, Persia, and Syria. Elsewhere he had travelled in the islands of Cape Verde, Singapore, Java, Sumatra, and Luzon of the Philippines. This incessant travel is the more remarkable as he was always sea-sick, was a man of delicate physique, and nowhere passed six months without being prostrated by severe illness. As to personal experiences, he had been wounded in Egypt by a Bedouin who strove to rob him, narrowly escaped death in saving captured Mexican officers from slaughter at the hands of renegade irregulars, and barely survived his unique experiences in the crater of a volcano.

His descent into the volcano of Tael, in the Philippines, illustrates Kane’s utter disregard of dangers whenever he desired to investigate any phenomena. As related by Dr. Elder, Kane not only was lowered two hundred feet below the point usually visited, but descended to the very surface of the burning lake and dipped his specimen bottles into the steaming sulphur water. This feat nearly cost him his life, for although he was able to crawl to and fasten the bamboo ropes around his body, yet his boots were charred in pieces on his feet, sulphurous air-currents stifled him into insensibility, and he would have perished had it not been for the strenuous exertions of Baron Löe, his companion.

The turning-point in Kane’s life came in 1850, when, induced by the persistent petition of Lady Franklin, President Taylor recommended to Congress an appropriation for an expedition in search of Sir John Franklin and his missing ships. Kane immediately volunteered for Arctic service, pressing and urging his application by every means at his command. Congress acted tardily, so that the whole expedition was fitted out in eighteen days, and Kane at the last moment, when his hopes had failed, received orders as surgeon of the Advance, the flagship, which he joined May 20, 1850.

The expedition owed its existence to the enterprise and generosity of Henry Grinnell, whose philanthropic mind planned, practical energy equipped, and munificence endowed it. Without Grinnell’s action Congress would have failed to fit out the expedition, and the grateful chapter of American co-operation with England in its Franklin search would have been unwritten. Such practical displays of sympathy in matters of general and national interest, now considered the most hopeful signs of international fellowship, may be said to have been inaugurated by the despatch of the first Grinnell expedition on its errand of humanity.

Under a joint resolution of Congress, passed May 2, 1850, the President was authorized “to accept and attach to the navy two vessels offered by Henry Grinnell, Esq., to be sent to the Arctic seas in search of Sir John Franklin and his companions.” These vessels – two very small brigs, the flagship Advance and the Rescue – were placed under command of Lieutenant Edwin J. DeHaven, an officer of Antarctic service under Wilkes. The vessels had detachable rudders, modern fittings, were admirably strengthened and fully equipped; in short, they were thoroughly adapted to the difficult navigation in prospect. Where Grinnell’s forethought and liberality ended there was, says Kane, another tale: the strictly naval equipment could not be praised, and the “crews consisted of man-of-war’s-men of various climes and habitudes, with constitutions most of them impaired by disease or temporarily broken by the excesses of shore life;” but he commends them as ever brave, willing, and reliable.

The squadron touched at various Greenland ports and then entered the dreaded ice-pack of Melville Bay, in which the sailing vessels made slow progress; but in their besetment of three weeks the only dangerous experience was a “nip,” which nearly destroyed the Advance. The movement of the ice-floes is thus graphically told by Kane: “The momentum of the assailing floe was so irresistible that as it impinged against the solid margin of the land ice there was no recoil, no interruption to its progress. The elastic material corrugated before the enormous pressure, then cracked, then crumbled, and at last rose, the lesser over the greater, sliding up in great inclined planes, and these again, breaking by their weight and their continued impulse, toppled over in long lines of fragmentary ice.”

DeHaven entered Lancaster Sound, near the end of August, in company with half a dozen English ships bound on the same humane errand, and on the 24th Master Griffin, of the Rescue, participated in the search with Captain Ommaney, which resulted in the discovery, on Beechy Island, of vestiges of an encampment. Two days later DeHaven and Kane shared in the joint search, wherein Captain Penny discovered the graves of three of Franklin’s crew. These discoveries proved that Franklin’s expedition had wintered there during 1845-46, and later innumerable traces of their stay were noted, indicating the good condition and activity of the expedition. On September 10th DeHaven’s squadron was off Griffith Island in company with eight English search ships. Consulting with Griffin, DeHaven concluded that they had not attained such a position as promised advantageous operations in the season of 1851, and so decided to extricate the vessels from the ice and return home.

Strong gales and an unusually early advance of winter prevented such action and resulted in the ships being frozen up in the pack, where they drifted helplessly to and fro, a condition they were destined to undergo for many months. Beset in the middle of Wellington Channel, the American squadron, with varying movements to and fro, first drifted under the influence of southerly gales to the north-northwest, attaining latitude 75° 25´ N., longitude 93° 31´ W. In this northerly drift the expedition discovered Murdaugh Island and quite extensive masses of land to the northwest of North Devon, to which the name of Grinnell was given. This land was further extended the following year by the discoveries of Captain Penny, and most unwarrantable efforts were made by ungenerous and unappreciating officials in England to take from the American squadron its ewe lamb of 1850, an attempt that, properly refuted, failed of its purpose.

October 2, 1860, the direction of the drift changed to the south and later to the east. Their involuntary course lay through Wellington Channel, Barrow Strait, and Lancaster Sound into Baffin Bay, where release came, near Cape Walsingham, June 5, 1851. The drift covered ten hundred and fifty miles and lasted eight and a half months. The sun was absent twelve weeks. It is impossible to adequately describe the physical and mental sufferings of the party during this protracted ice imprisonment. It was a constant succession of harassing conditions, each, if possible, seeming worse than the former. Now the ships were so firmly imbedded in the cemented ice-pack that extrication appeared impossible; again the complete disruption of the pack threatened, or the instant destruction of their vessels impended, with prospects of a winter on the naked floe under such conditions of darkness, sickness, lack of shelter, and suitable nutrition as would render a lingering death unavoidable. No single week passed with a feeling of security; for days at a time there was no hour free from terrible suspense as to what fate might immediately befall, and four times in one day the entire party prepared to abandon ship at order. The cold became extreme, the mean of one week in March being thirty-one degrees below zero; seal and other fresh meat could be got only in small quantities, and scurvy, the bane of Arctic explorers, affected all save six of the crew, DeHaven being put off duty by this disease. In all these terrible experiences, which were borne with a fortitude, courage, and patience most creditable, Kane was first and foremost in sustaining the heroic efforts of Griffin, master of the Rescue, on whom the executive duties devolved during DeHaven’s illness. It may be said that not only Kane’s medical skill, but also his cheeriness, activity, and ingenious devices contributed largely to conserve the health, spirits, and morale of the crew in these dark hours when despair seemed justified.

Released from the pack, DeHaven patched up his injured ships and attempted to return and prosecute further the Franklin search; but, stopped in his return journey by ice in the upper part of Melville Bay, he judiciously decided to return to the United States, which was safely reached September 30, 1851.

The following extracts from Kane’s very vivid account of the expedition illustrate some of the most striking phases of their experiences as recorded in his journal.

Of the conditions and experience of the Advance in the moving ice-pack he says:

“We were yet to be familiarized with the strife of the ice-tables, now broken into tumbling masses and piling themselves in angry confusion against our sides; now fixed in chaotic disarray by the fields of new ice that imbedded them in a single night; again, perhaps, opening in treacherous pools, only to close around us with a force that threatened to grind our brig to powder.”

“A level snow-covered surface was rising up in inclined planes or rudely undulating curves. These, breaking at their summits, fell off on each side in masses of twenty tons’ weight. Tables of six feet in thickness by twenty of perpendicular height, and some of them fifteen yards in length, surging up into the misty air, heaving, rolling, tottering, and falling with a majestic deliberation worthy of the forces that impelled them.”

The following descriptions indicate the narrow escapes of the ships from destruction during disruptions of the ice-pack:

“The separated sides would come together with an explosion like a mortar, craunching the newly formed field and driving it headlong in fragments for fifty feet upon the floe till it piled up against our bulwarks. Everything betokened a crisis. Sledges, boats, packages of all sorts were disposed in order; contingencies were met as they approached by new delegations of duty; every man was at work, officers and seamen alike. The Rescue, crippled and thrown away from us to the further side of a chasm, was deserted, and her company consolidated with ours. Our own brig groaned and quivered under the pressure against her sides.”