The band started from the little town of Kansas on the twenty-ninth day of May, 1843.  It returned to the United States in August, 1844.  After traveling seventeen hundred miles, it reached, September sixth, Salt Lake.  On the fourth day of November it reached Fort Vancouver, on the Columbia River.  On the sixth day of March, 1844, it reached Sutter’s Fort in the destitute condition already explained.  The distance from Fort Hall by the route taken is about two thousand miles.  The party remained at Sutter’s Fort until the twenty-fourth day of March, or as Kit Carson expresses the time from his memory, the expedition remained at this place about one month.  At the expiration of this time, the party was sufficiently recruited to be ready for their return journey, which they commenced in April, 1844.  Just previous to their taking leave of Mr. Sutter, two of the company became deranged, owing to the privations and fasting to which they had been obliged to submit before being ushered into a land of plenty.  They had indulged appetite too freely, and brought on one of those strange revolutions in the brain’s action which never fails to excite the pity of friend and foe.  The first warning which the party had that one of the men was laboring under a disordered intellect occurred in the following manner.  Early in the morning the man suddenly started from his sleep and began to ask his companions where his riding animal was gone.  During this time it was by him, but he did not know it.  Unknown to the rest of the party he started off soon after in search of his imaginary animal.  As soon as his absence became known to Fremont, he surmised the truth and sent persons in all directions to hunt for him.  They searched the neighboring country for many miles and made inquiries of all the friendly Indians they chanced upon, but failed to discover him.  Several days of delay was caused by this most unhappy circumstance.  Finally, it becoming necessary for the party to depart without him, word was left with Mr. Sutter to continue the hunt.  He did so most faithfully; and, by his exertions, some time after the party had set out on the return trip, the maniac was found and kept at the Fort until he had entirely recovered.  He was then, on the first opportunity, provided with a passage to the United States.  Before we follow the party on their homeward-bound tramp, it is proper that the reader should be favored with the estimate and views which the American historian, statesman and scholar, Colonel Benton, has recorded concerning the perils undergone and results accomplished by this expedition.  His pen is so graphic and life-like that the reader will doubtless thank us for the extract.  Besides presenting a view of the expedition, it will unfold a fact which shows where the origin of the expedition had its conception.  We give all he says concerning the expedition.[17]

[Footnote 17:  Thirty Years View, vol. ii. chap. 134.]