%368.  The Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.%—­Some explorations you remember had been made.  Lewis and Clark went across the Northwest to the mouth of the Columbia in 1804-1805, and Zebulon M. Pike had penetrated in 1806 to the wild mountainous region about the head waters of the Platte, Arkansas, and Rio Grande and had probably seen the great mountain that now bears his name.  Major Long followed Pike in 1820, gave his name to Longs Peak, and brought back such a dismal account of the West that he was largely responsible for the belief in a desert.  The great plains from the sources of the Sabine, Brazos, and Colorado rivers to the northern boundary Were, he said, “peculiarly adapted as a range for buffaloes, wild Goats, and other wild game,” and “might serve as a barrier to prevent too great an expansion of our population westward;” but nobody would think of cultivating the plains.  For years after that the American Fur Trading Company of St. Louis had annually sent forth its caravans into Oregon and New Mexico.  Because the way was beset by hostile Indians, these caravans were protected by large and strongly armed bands, and in time wore out well-beaten tracks across the prairies and over the mountain passes, which came to be known on the frontier as the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.  In 1832 Captain Bonneville[1] took a wagon train over the Rocky Mountain divide into the Green River Valley, and Nathaniel J. Wyeth led a party from New England to the Oregon country, and in 1834 established Fort Hall in what is now Idaho.  Still later in the thirties went Marcus Whitman and his party.

[Footnote 1:  Bead his adventures as told by Washington Irving.]

%369. %Explorations of Fremont.%—­By this time it was clear that the tide of westward emigration would soon set in strongly towards Oregon.  Then at last Benton succeeded in persuading Congress to order an exploration of the far West, and in 1842 Lieutenant Fremont was sent to see if the South Pass of the rocky Mountains, the usual crossing place, would best accommodate the coming emigration.  He set out from Kansas City (then a frontier hamlet, now a prosperous city) with Kit Carson, a famous hunter, for guide, and following the wagon trails of those who had gone before him, made his way to the pass.  He found its ascent so gradual that his party hardly knew when they reached the summit.  Passing through it to the valley beyond, he climbed the great peak which now bears his name and stands 13,570 feet above the sea.

Though Fremont discovered no new route, he did much to dispel the popular idea created by Long that the plains were barren, and the American Desert began to shrink.  In 1843 Fremont was sent out again.  Making his way westward through the South Pass, where his work ended in 1842, he turned southward to visit Great Salt Lake, and then pushed on to Walla Walla on the Columbia River (see map on p. 330).  Thence he went on to the Dalles, and then by boat to Fort Vancouver, and then, after returning to the Dalles, southward to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento valley, and so back to the States in 1844.