466 
TRAVELS IN OREGON, NO. 2. 
Leaving the course of the Platte they crossed over to 
the Sweet Water, and passing by Rock Independence, 
and a place called the Devil’s Gate, where the Sweet 
Water cuts through a granite ridge, they came, on the 
9th of August, to the summit of the Wind River Moun¬ 
tains, 7490 feet above the level of the sea, three hundred 
and twenty miles from Fort Laramie. On these moun¬ 
tains are the head waters of four great rivers of the con¬ 
tinent; the Missouri and Platte rivers flowing to the 
east, and the Columbia and Colorado to the west. After 
spending some days in the effort, the leaders of the party 
sncceeded in gaining the top of the highest peak, 13,510 
feet above the level of the Gulf of Mexico. They mount¬ 
ed the barometer in the snow of the summit, and fixing 
a ramrod in a crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave 
in the breeze, where never flag waved before. 
This point terminated the journey of Captain Fremont, 
on his first expedition. In the succeeding year, he came 
again to the same region upon a second tour of explora¬ 
tion, for the purpose of connecting his previous surveys 
with those made by Captain Wilkes and the officers of 
the United States Exploring Expedition. In the prose¬ 
cution of his mission, he had the pleasure of making the 
first voyage ever made by a white man on the waters 
of the Utah lake. When they looked from the summit 
of a peninsular butte upon its waters, and regarded it as 
an object of their anxious search, and as one of the great 
points of the exploration, they thought they experienced 
nearlv the same feelings which must have stirred the 
breasts of Balboa and his men when first they looked 
upon the waters of the Western Ocean. 
After leaving the lake they proceeded on their w T ay 
towards the Columbia, suffering the greatest privations 
and hunger. They took in their way Fort Hall, Lewis’s 
river, the Grande Ronde and Wallawalla, and reached 
Vancouver just as one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s 
