“All the maps up to that time had shown this region traversed from east to west—­from the base of the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco—­by a great river called the Buena Ventura:  which may be translated, the Good Chance.  Governor McLaughlin believed in the existence of this river, and made out a conjectural manuscript map to show its place and course.  Fremont believed in it, and his plan was to reach it before the dead of winter, and then hybernate upon it.  As a great river he knew that it must have some rich bottoms, covered with wood and grass, where the wild animals would collect and shelter, when the snows and freezing winds drove them from the plains; and with these animals to live on, and grass for the horses, and wood for fires, he expected to avoid suffering, if not to enjoy comfort, during his solitary sojourn in that remote and profound wilderness.

“He proceeded—­soon encountered deep snows which impeded progress upon the highlands—­descended into a low country to the left (afterwards known to be the Great Basin, from which no water issues to any sea)—­skirted an enormous chain of mountain on the right, luminous with glittering white snow—­saw strange Indians, who mostly fled—­found a desert—­no Buena Ventura; and death from cold and famine staring him in the face.  The failure to find the river, or tidings of it, and the possibility of its existence seeming to be forbid by the structure of the country, and hybernation in the inhospitable desert being impossible, and the question being that of life and death, some new plan of conduct became indispensable.  His celestial observations told him that he was in the latitude of the Bay of San Francisco, and only seventy miles from it.  But what miles! up and down that snowy mountain which the Indians told him no men could cross in the winter—­which would have snow upon it as deep as the trees, and places where people would slip off and fall half a mile at a time—­a fate which actually befell a mule, packed with the precious burden of botanical specimens, collected along a travel of two thousand miles.  No reward could induce an Indian to become a guide in the perilous adventure of crossing this mountain.  All recoiled and fled from the adventure.  It was attempted without a guide—­in the dead of winter—­accomplished in forty days—­the men and surviving horses—­a woeful procession, crawling along one by one; skeleton men leading skeleton horses—­and arriving at Sutter’s Settlement in the beautiful valley of the Sacramento; and where a genial warmth, and budding flowers, and trees in foliage, and grassy ground, and flowing streams, and comfortable food, made a fairy contrast with the famine and freezing they had encountered, and the lofty Sierra Nevada which they had climbed.  Here he rested and recruited; and from this point, and by way of Monterey, the first tidings were heard of the party since leaving Fort Vancouver.