rapper, whose knowledge, like that of
the native, was personal only. Indeed, he was guided in his journeys
by several men now quite as famous as himself--Kit Carson, Fitzpatrick,
Walker, and Godey. But the field was still new to the world and to
science. Quite appropriately, one of the highest peaks from which the
Colorado draws its first waters, is now distinguished by the name of
the earliest scientific observer to enter its basin. Fremont came up the
North Platte and the Sweetwater branch, crossing (1842) from that
stream by the South Pass thirty-four years after Andrew Henry had first
traversed it, over to the headwaters of the Colorado. The ascent to
South Pass is very gradual, and there is no gorge or defile. The total
width is about twenty miles. A day or two later Fremont climbed out of
the valley on the flank of the Wind River Mountains. "We had reached a
very elevated point," he says; "and in the valley below and among the
hills were a number of lakes at different levels; some two or three
hundred feet above others, with which they communicated by foaming
torrents. Even to our great height the roar of the cataracts came up,
and we could see them leaping down in lines of snowy foam." Thus are
the rills and the rivulets from the summits collected in these beautiful
alpine lakes to give birth to the Colorado in white cascades, typical,
at the very fountainhead, of the turbulence of the waters which have
rent for themselves a trough of rock to the gulf.* Springing from these
clear pools and seething falls, shadowed by sombre pines and granite
crags, its course is run through plunging rapids to the final assault
on the sea, where wide sand-barrens and desolation prevail. Fremont
understood this from his guides and says: "Lower down, from Brown's
Hole to the southward, the river runs through lofty chasms, walled in by
precipices of red rock." The descent

"of the Colorado is but little known, and that little derived from vague
report. Three hundred miles of its lower part, as it approaches the Gulf
of California, is reported to be smooth and tranquil; but its upper part
is manifestly broken into many falls and rapids. From many descriptions
of trappers it is probable that in its foaming course among its lofty
precipices, it presents many scenes of wild grandeur; and though
offering many temptations, and often discussed, no trappers have yet
been found bold enough to undertake a voyage which has so certain a
prospect