ioned, whose names
are linked with the Tahoe region, and who came to it in the hope of
"making their everlasting fortunes" when Squaw Valley "started up."

CHAPTER XXXV

THE FREMONT HOWITZER AND LAKE TAHOE

Hundreds of thousands of Americans doubtless have read "How a Woman's
Wit Saved California to the Union," yet few indeed know how intimately
that fascinating piece of history is linked with Lake Tahoe.

Here is the story of the link:

When Fremont started out on his Second Exploration (fairly well dealt
with in another chapter), he stopped at the Kansas frontier to equip.
When he finally started, the party (108) was armed generally with
Hall's carbines, which, says Fremont:

with a brass twelve-pound howitzer, had been furnished to me
from the United States arsenal at St. Louis, agreeably to the
command of Colonel S.W. Kearny, commanding the third
military division. Three men were especially detailed for the
management of this, under the charge of Louis Zindel, a native
of Germany, who had been nineteen years a non-commissioned
officer of the artillery in the Prussian army, and regularly
instructed in the duties of his profession.

As soon as the news that he had added a cannon to his equipment
reached Washington, the Secretary of War, James M. Porter, sent a
message after him, post haste, countermanding the expedition on the
ground that he had prepared himself with a military equipment, which
the pacific nature of his journey did not require. It was specially
charged as a heinous offense that he had procured a small mountain
howitzer from the arsenal at St. Louis, in addition to his other
firearms.

But Fremont had already started. He was not far on his way, and the
message could have reached him easily. It was not destined to do so,
however, until after his return. The message came to the hands of his
girl-wife, Jessie Benton Fremont, the daughter of Missouri's great
senator, Thomas H. Benton, and she knew, as Charles A. Moody has well
written, that

this order, obeyed, would indefinitely postpone the
expedition--probably wreck it entirely. She did not forward
it. Consulting no one, since there was no one at hand to
consult, she sent a swift messenger to her husband with word
to break camp and move forward at once--"he could not have
the reason for haste, but there was reason enough." And he,
knowing well and well trusting the sanity a