212 JOHN C. FREMONT. 



letter. When it reaches Washington you may be on 

 your way to California. 



"Former letters have made you acquainted with 

 our journey so far as Bent's Fort, and from report 

 you will have heard the circumstances of our depar- 

 ture from the Upper Pueblo of the Arkansas. We 

 left that place about the 25th of November, with 

 upwards of a hundred good mules and one hundred 

 and thirty bushels of shelled corn, intended to sup- 

 port our animals across the snow of the high moun- 

 tains and down to the lower parts of the Grand River 

 tributaries, where usually the snow forms no obstacle 

 to winter travelling. At the Pueblo I had engaged as 

 a guide an old trapper well known as 'Bill Williams,' 

 and w r ho had spent some twenty-five years of his 

 life in trapping various parts of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. The error of our journey was committed 

 in engaging this man. He proved never to have 

 in the least known, or entirely to have forgotten, 

 the whole region of country through which we were 

 to pass. We occupied more than half a month in 

 making the journey of a few days, blundering a tor- 

 tuous way through deep snow which already began 

 to choke up the passes, for which we were obliged 

 to waste time in searching. About the llth of De- 

 cember we found ourselves at the North of the Del 

 Norte Canon, where that river issues from the St. 



