JOHN C. FREMONT. 213 



John's Mountain, one of the highest, most rugged 

 and impracticable of all the Kocky Mountain ranges, 

 inaccessible to trappers and hunters even in the 

 summer-time. Across the point of this elevated 

 range our guide conducted us, and, having still great 

 confidence in his knowledge, we pressed onward 

 with fatal resolution. Even along the river-bottoms 

 the snow was already belly-deep for the mules, fre- 

 quently snowing in the valley and almost constantly 

 in the mountains. The cold was extraordinary, at 

 the warmest hours of the day (between one and two) 

 the thermometer, (Fahrenheit,) standing in the shade 

 of only a tree-trunk, at zero ; the day sunshiny, 

 with a moderate breeze. We pressed up toward 

 the summit, the snow deepening, and in four or 

 five days reached the naked ridges which lie above 

 the timbered country, and which form the dividing 

 grounds between the waters of the Atlantic and 

 Pacific Oceans. Along these naked ridges it storms 

 nearly all winter, and the winds sweep across them 

 with remorseless fury. On our first attempt to 

 cross we encountered a pouderie (dry snow driven 

 thick through the air by violent wind, and in which 

 objects are visible only at a short distance,) and were 

 driven back, having some ten or twelve men vari- 

 ously frozen, face, hands, or feet. The guide became 

 nigh being frozen to death here, and dead mules 



