400 THE IMMIGRATION OF 1843.

nothing to do with the emigration movement of 1843, was an incident of it. The expedition left the Mis- souri River, near the junction of the Kansas, on the 29th of May, travelling just behind the emigrants as far as Soda Springs at the Great Bend of Bear River, where they turned off to Salt Lake. Having made a hasty visit to that inland sea, 57 they returned to the emigrant road, which they followed to the Dalles, 58 arriving there on the 4th of November. There Fre- mont left his men and animals, and took a canoe to Fort Vancouver to purchase supplies for his expedi- tion to California, which were furnished him on the credit of the "United States, the company sending the goods to the Dalles in their own boats. The emi- grants ridicule Fremont's sobriquet of ' Pathfinder/

The naturalist Audubon was skirting the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains in the summer of 1843, in pursuit of his favorite study of ornithology; and mention is made of a German botanist named Luders, whom Fremont met on the Columbia, at a little bay below the Cascades, which was called after him Lu- ders' Bay. The toils and dangers of this class of men occupy but little space in history, yet are none the less worthy of mention that they are not performed for gam or political preferment. If it is a brave deed to dare

5 <The following absurd report appeared in the St Louis Gazette: 'On the 16th of September they surveyed the Great Salt Lake, supposed to empty into the Pacific, and computed its length to be 280 miles, and its breadth 100.

^wZo^C^es, MS., 17; « Hist. Or., MS 273. Accordmg jto Nesmith, J. G. Campbell, Ransom Clark, Chapman, and Major ^ illian i Gd pin travelled with Fremont's company. Or. Pioneer Assoc., Iram., 18, o, 55-6; Fremont's Rept. Explor. Ex., 107. A,MrP«

• This feeling is illustrated by the following extract from Nesmith ^s Address

in Or. Piomer Assoc, Trans., 1875, 60: < In the eastern states I ^^* ^; l asked how long it was after Fremont discovered Oregon th at L e migrat edt • It is true that in the year 1843 Fremont, then a lieute ^*£.^? ""g^ corps, did cross the plains, and brought his party to the Dalles it he rea rot on/ emigration. His outfit contained all the conveniences and li xuries that a government appropriation could procure, while he » roughed it ma ^covered carriage, surrounded by servants paid from the public purse. He re turned ^ the States, and was rewarded with a president ud nominal «^ Path finder." The path he found was that made by the hardy front ersi nen wno preceded him to the Pacific, and who stood by their rifles and he Id the .country against hostile Indians and British threats, without government ai J, iec0 S nition until 1849, when the first government troops came to our reliet.