p17 j 290 
- While engaged in crossing one of the numerous creeks which frequently 
impeded and checked our way, sometimes obliging us to ascend them for 
several miles, one of the people (Alexis Ayot) was shot through the leg b 
the accidental discharge of a rifle—a mortifying and painful mischance, 
to be crippled for life by an accident, after having nearly accomplished in 
safety a long and eventful journey. He was a young man of remarkabl 
good and cheerful temper, and had been among the useful and efficient 
men of the party. ~~ 
After having travelled directly along its banks for two hundred and 
ninety miles, we left the river, where it bore suddenly off in a northwesterly 
diréction, towards its junction with the Republican fork of the Kansas, dis- 
tant about sixty miles; and, continuing our easterly course, in about twenty 
miles we entered the wagon road from Santa Fé to Independence, and on 
the last day of July encamped again at the little town of Kansas, on the 
banks of the Missouri river. 
During our protracted absence of fourteen months, in the course of which 
we had necessarily been exposed to great varieties of weather and of climate, 
no one case of sickness had ever occurred among us 
Here ended our land journey; and the day following our arrival, we 
found ourselves on board a steamboat rapidly gliding down the broad 
Missouri. Our travel-worn animals had not been sold and dispersed over 
the country to renewed labor, but were placed at good pasturage.on the 
frontier, and are now ready to do their part in the coming expedition. 
On the 6th of August we arrived at St. Louis, where the party was 
finally disbanded; a great number of the men having their-homes in the 
neighborhood. 
_ Andreas Fuentes also remained here, having readily found employment 
for the winter, and is one of the men engaged to accompany me the present 
ear. . 
. Pablo Hernandez remains in the family of Senator Benton, where he is 
well taken care of, and conciliates good will by his docility, intelligence, and 
amiability. General Almonte, the Mexican minister at Washington, to 
whom he was of course made known, kindly offered to take charge of 
him, and to carry him back to Mexico; but the boy preferred to remain 
where he was until he got an education, for which he shows equal ardor 
- and aptitude. SS 
Our Chinook Indian had his wish to see the whites fully gratified. He 
accompanied me to Washington, and, after remaining several months at 
‘the Columbia college, was sent by the Indian department to PI \iladelphia,. 
oe. song other things, he learned to read and write well, and speak 
ees Fi 
English language with some fluency. Sas 
He will accompany me in a few days to the frontier of Missouri, whence 
he will be sent with some one of the emigrant companies to the village at 
= Dalles of the Columbia. oe 
_._. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, _ 
ee 
| | J.-C. FREMONT, 
= 3 _ Bt. Capt. Topl. Engineers. 
