42 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



by direct measurement, is 12730 French, or 13568 English 

 feet. This would make Fremont's Peak 324 toises (or 

 2072 English feet) higher than the elevation assigned by 

 Long to James's Peak, which, according to its position, 

 appears to be identical with Pike's Peak in the map above 

 referred to. The Wind Eiver mountains form the divortia 

 aquarum, or division between the waters flowing towards 

 either ocean. Captain Fremont (in his Official Report of 

 the Exploring Expedition to the Eocky Mountains in the 

 year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the years 

 1843-44, p. 70,) says, " We saw, on one side, countless 

 mountain lakes, and the sources of the Eio Colorado which 

 carries its waters through the gulf of California to the 

 Pacific ; and, on the other side, the deep valley of the Wind 

 river, where are situated the sources of the Yellowstone 

 river, one of the principal branches of the Missouri which 

 unites with the Mississippi at St. Louis. To the north- 

 west, rise, covered with perpetual snow, the summits called 

 the Trois Tetons, where the true source of the Missouri 

 itself is situated, not far from that of the head water of the 

 Oregon or Columbia, or the source of that branch of it 

 called Snake Eiver or Lewis Fork." To the astonishment of 

 the adventurous travellers, they found the top of Fremont's 

 Peak visited by bees : perhaps, like the butterflies seen by 

 me, also among perpetual snow but in much more elevated 

 regions in the Andes of Peru, they had been carried thither 

 involuntarily by ascending currents of air. I have seen 

 in the Pacific, at a great distance from the coast, large 

 winged lepidopterous insects fall on the deck of the ship, 



