Explorers and Travellers

The Discoverer of the Antarctic Continent

On the colored and beautifully engraved map of the world of Gulielmus Blaeuw (Amsterdam, 1642) are two side maps, one of the Arctic, the other of the Antarctic, Circle. The latter represents not only the entire Antarctic Circle as unbroken land, but also extends this great supposititious continent some distance to the northward of the sixtieth parallel and gives to it the name Magallanica Terra Australis Incognita. This mythical Magellanic continent held its place, a subject of mystery and interest to every geographer, until Captain James Cook, the greatest of navigators, either ancient or modern, attempted its definition or solution. His success here as elsewhere was marvellous, and on January 17, 1773, in the Resolution, first of all men, Cook penetrated the ice-bound wastes of the Antarctic regions, reaching 67° 15´ S., on the fortieth meridian E. In the following summer he completed his circumnavigation of Southern seas in high latitudes, and penetrating the Antarctic Circle at three widely separated points, attained, in January, 1774, in 117° W., the extraordinary high southern latitude of 71° 10´. Cook thus “put an end to the search for a southern continent, which had engrossed the attention of maritime nations for two centuries.”

Cook’s discoveries led to erroneous conclusions as to the physical constituents of the Antarctic regions. Although he had reached the Great Southern Circle at four different places, and nearly attained it at the fifth, yet no land therein, either island or continent, met his eager gaze; instead there everywhere met his view a close pack of ice-floes of enormous height and extent, with a few wind-caused breaks or channels. Hence many geographers concluded that the Antarctic regions were ice-covered seas, either totally or in greater part. To-day, in the light of modern science and discovery, the opinion prevails that there is an extensive ice-clad Antarctic land, possibly rising to the dignity of a continent; and toward this conclusion no explorations have more directly and largely contributed than those of the American sailor and explorer, Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy.

The first Antarctic land ever discovered was by an American sealer, Captain Palmer, from Connecticut. Bellingshausen, of the Russian Imperial Navy, in his voyage of 1821, that resulted in the discovery of the islands of Peter and Alexander, on the sixty-ninth parallel, fell in with the Yankee skipper immediately after he had discovered the land, to which Bellingshausen justly attached Palmer’s name. Palmer’s Land, extended into the Antarctic Circle by Biscoe’s discoveries of 1832, merges into Graham Land of the latter explorer.

Probably incited by these discoveries, France sent forth an Antarctic expedition, under Dumont d’Irville, in 1837, and England, under Sir James Clark Ross, the discoverer of the northern magnetic pole, in 1839. Simultaneously with these expeditions was organized one by the United States, for which the exceedingly liberal appropriation of $300,000 was made.

This last expedition was authorized by the act of Congress of May 18, 1836, “for the purpose of exploring and surveying in the Great Southern Ocean in the important interests of our commerce embarked in the whale fisheries and other adventures in that ocean, as well as to determine the existence of all doubtful islands and shoals, and to discover and accurately fix the position of those which lie in or near the track pursued by our merchant vessels in that quarter.” This expedition, the first of its character undertaken by the United States, grew out of the vast capital employed in whaling and trade.

The expedition was first organized under Commodore Thomas Ap Catesby Jones, United State Navy, but finally the President of the United States appointed Lieutenant Charles Wilkes to command the squadron, and he was formally assigned to this duty under instructions of Secretary Paulding, dated August 11, 1838.

Charles Wilkes was born in New York City, April 3, 1798, and entering the United States Navy as a midshipman at the age of nineteen was promoted to be lieutenant in 1826. He had long served in the department of charts and instruments and was especially qualified for the proposed astronomical and surveying work connected with the expedition.

An anomalous feature of the expedition was the acceptance of appointment as second in command by Lieutenant William L. Hudson, whose naval rank was above that of Wilkes’s. The squadron, then consisting of the sloops of war Vincennes and Peacock, the store-ship Relief, the brig Porpoise, and tenders Sea Gull and Flying Fish, left Norfolk, Va., August 13, 1838. Associated with Wilkes were a number of lieutenants destined to later distinguish themselves in their country’s service, among whom may be mentioned T. P. Craven, James Alden, S. P. Lee, G. F. Emmons, and A. L. Case, all of whom afterward rose to be rear admirals, and H. J. Harstene, later associated with the relief of Kane. Under its instructions the expedition was to visit Rio de Janeiro, Cape Frio, the Rio Negro, Terra del Fuego, the Antarctic Ocean southward of Powell’s group to Cook’s farthest, Valparaiso, the Navigators’ Group, the Feejee Islands, the Antarctic regions south of Van Dieman’s Land, whence it would return home by way of the Sandwich Islands, San Francisco, Singapore, and the Cape of Good Hope. No ship had steam-power, nor was any vessel of the squadron fitted with appliances for protection in ice navigation; indeed, the squadron was a makeshift, ill-suited for so long and dangerous a voyage. Eventually the Sea Gull was lost in a gale off the coast of Chili, the Flying Fish proved of little use, and the extreme slowness of the Relief delayed the voyage.

Wilkes sailed for the Antarctic regions from Orange Bay, near Cape Horn, on February 24, 1839, but owing to the lateness of the summer accomplished little, and spent thirty-six days in attempting to visit Palmer’s Land, which was only sighted.

A second attempt at Antarctic exploration was made by Wilkes from Sidney, N. S. W., which was left December 21, 1839. A compact barrier of field ice, with frequent large bergs, was fallen in with on January 11, 1840, and from this time on the ships were often in imminent danger owing to continuous ice, impenetrable fog, bad weather, and occasional embayment of the vessels in the ice-pack. It is scarcely needful to enter into the details of Wilkes’s perilous voyage from longitude 95° E. to 155° E. and in latitudes ranging from the Antarctic Circle to the neighborhood of the seventieth parallel. It may be mentioned, however, that the Peacock narrowly escaped entire destruction by collision with a heavy iceberg, which seriously injured the ship. Fortunately she cleared the berg in time to escape crushing by the falling of detached ice masses from the overhanging floe berg. Heavy gales and the bad sanitary condition of the ship caused the medical officers of the Vincennes to specially report to Wilkes that such continued exposure would so weaken the crew by sickness as to hazard the ship and the lives of all on board. Wilkes, however, had sighted the long-looked-for Antarctic land, and, disregarding the warning, followed the coast-line eastward, keeping his squadron as near it as the conditions would permit. The land was a series of lofty mountain ranges, often snow-capped, frequently broken by indentations, and, worst of all, shut out from immediate approach by an almost continuous ice-barrier, which in its extent, height, and appearance struck every beholder with admiration not unmixed with apprehension. This barrier rose perpendicularly from the deep sea to a height varying from one hundred to two hundred feet above the level of the water, which gave no bottom in soundings ranging from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty fathoms. Despite this great depth of water, the perpendicular icy barrier was evidently grounded, thus indicating ice of a thickness of about one thousand feet.

Regarding the land discovered the first reliable observations were those of January 16th, when land was seen by Lieutenant Ringgold, of the Porpoise, and by Midshipmen Eld and Reynolds, of the Peacock, their statement running as follows: “The mountains could be distinctly seen stretching over the ice to the southwest.” On the 19th land was again visible from the Vincennes, Alden reporting it twice to Wilkes, and on the same day high land was seen by all the crew of the Peacock. The ships were then in longitude 154° E., 66° 20´ S., practically on the Antarctic Circle. On February 2d high bold land bordered by the ice-barrier was visible to the Vincennes and Porpoise in longitude 137° E., latitude 66° 12´ S. Five days later the westerly trend of the land as previously seen was confirmed by a well-defined outline of high land rising above the perpendicular ice-barrier, the Vincennes being in longitude 132° E., latitude 66° 8´ S. On February 9th, in longitude 123° E., latitude 65° 27´ S., the land is spoken of as being indistinct. At 8 A.M. of the 12th land was reported again, in longitude 112° E., latitude 64° 57´ S., the land being in about 65° 20´ S. and trending nearly east and west.

Wilkes says of the land and of his efforts to reach it: “The solid barrier prevented our further progress. Land was now distinctly seen from eighteen to twenty miles distant, bearing from S.S.E. to S.W., a lofty mountain range covered with snow, though showing many ridges and indentations.” Two days later he writes: “The 14th was remarkably clear and the land very distinct. By measurement we made the extent of coast of the Antarctic continent then in sight seventy-five miles and by approximate measurement three thousand feet high.”

In longitude 97° E., Wilkes found the ice trending to the northward, well out of the Antarctic Circle, and after following it near to where Cook was stopped in February, 1773, Wilkes took his course for Sydney, where he learned that an English sealer, Captain Balleny, had discovered land in longitude 165° E., south of and near the point where Wilkes found the ice-barrier, and had attained a latitude of 69° S. in longitude 172° E. Here Wilkes, hearing of the prospective arrival of Sir James Clark Ross, forwarded for his benefit a tracing of the chart prepared as the American squadron had passed along the barrier, supplemented by the discoveries of Balleny. Ross publishes a copy of this chart in his “Voyage to the Southern Seas,” together with Wilkes’s letter, giving information not only as to discoveries, but also as to winds, currents, and the probable position of the magnetic pole.

Most unfortunately, on the chart transmitted to Ross by Wilkes, he entered, without distinguishing marks, land between longitudes 160° E. and 165° E., near the sixty-sixth parallel, which should have been marked with the legend of “probable land,” it being most probably the supposed land of Lieutenant Ringgold, of the Vincennes, who on January 13, 1840, in longitude, 163° E., latitude 65° 8´ S., to use Ringgold’s own words, “thought he could discern to the southeast something like distant mountains.” As a matter of fact, Ross found no bottom at six hundred fathoms over this charted land, and naturally enough pointed out that he had sailed over a clear ocean where Wilkes had laid down land. This lack of caution on the part of Wilkes led to an acrimonious controversy which had no good end, but tended to discredit among the ill-informed the discoveries of land actually made by the expedition. Ross, evidently somewhat nettled, had the questionable taste to omit from his general South Polar Chart all of Wilkes’s discoveries. This course, it is hardly necessary to say, has not commended itself to the best geographers, for in the standard atlas of Stieler, issued by the famous publishing house of Justus Purthes, the discoveries claimed by Wilkes are entered, with the legend, “Wilkes Land,” extending from longitude 95° E. to 160° E. It is gratifying, moreover, to note as an evidence of the impartial justice of the Royal Geographical Society, that it acknowledged the accuracy and extent of the discoveries of Wilkes and of the value of his detailed narrative of the expedition, and therefor that society awarded to him its founders’ medal.

Ross, it may be added, reached the highest known latitude in the Antarctic Circle, 78° 11´ S., where he discovered Victoria Land, tracing its coast from 70° to 79° S. latitude, along the meridian of 161° W., which proved to be a bold, mountainous country, practically inaccessible and having within its limits an active volcano about twelve thousand feet high – Mount Erebus.

On the subject of an Antarctic continent Ross says: “There do not appear to me sufficient grounds to justify the assertion that the various patches of land recently discovered by the American, French, and English navigators on the verge of the Antarctic Circle unite to form a great southern continent.”

The investigations and deductions of a great scientist, the late W. B. Carpenter, give the latest word on this subject. Carpenter says: “The Antarctic ice-barrier is to be regarded as the margin of a polar ice-cap whose thickness at its edge is probably about two thousand feet… These vast masses have originally formed part of a great ice-sheet formed by the cumulative pressure of successive snow-falls over a land area,” etc. Elsewhere he adds: “That the circumpolar area is chiefly land and not water seems to be farther indicated,” etc. The periphery of the ice-cap is estimated to be about ten thousand miles.

Thus the ordinary man may safely believe in the existence of an Antarctic continent whose outer margins were first skirted and recognized as part of a great land by Charles Wilkes, of the United States Navy.

After quitting the Southern seas, Wilkes voyaged through the Pacific Ocean, in accordance with his original orders. In the Feejee group, however, his experiences were most unfortunate. The pillaging of a grounded cutter by the natives resulted in Wilkes destroying one of their villages and capturing several of their chiefs, causing ill-feeling which a few days later culminated in an attack on a boat’s crew, whereby Lieutenant Underwood and Midshipman Henry were killed by the natives and others of the party were severely wounded. An attack of a retaliatory character was made by Wilkes, who destroyed two native towns, laid waste plantations, killed about sixty of the savages and wounded many others.

At every port Wilkes and his staff of officers and scientific assistants were most assiduous in making surveys and in acquiring knowledge of the countries and their inhabitants. Even the most prolonged voyage must end, and with pleasure officers and men saw again the shores of their country, where Wilkes landed, at New York, June 10, 1842, after four years of absence.

As might be expected, there were officers of the squadron who felt that their merits had not been properly recognized by Lieutenant Wilkes during this voyage of four years, and in consequence charges of a voluminous character and under a large number of heads were brought against him. The court which considered them acquitted Wilkes except as regards the punishment of several of his men, which in some cases appeared to have been more summary and severe than the regulations of the navy justified, for which action a reprimand was administered.

The collections made by the expedition, and the scientific volumes published in connection therewith, were very important additions to the scientific knowledge of the world. Professor Henry, in 1871, says: “The basis of the National Museum is a collection of the specimens of the United States Exploring Expedition under Captain, now Admiral, Wilkes… The collections made by the naval expeditions – 1838 to 1842 – are supposed greatly to exceed those of any other similar character fitted out by any government; no published series of results compare in magnitude with that issued under the direction of the joint Library Committees of Congress.” Sixteen quarto volumes were issued, five of narrative and eleven of a scientific character, while other parts were unfortunately destroyed by fire.

The beginning of the great civil war again brought Wilkes into striking and international prominence. Sent to the coast of Africa for the United States steamship San Jacinto, Wilkes promptly brought her into West Indies waters. Here he learned that the Confederate Commissioners, John Slidell and J. M. Mason, had run the blockade and landed in Cuba, and he decided, without consultation or orders, to capture them. The San Jacinto was then cruising for the Confederate privateer, the Sumter, but visited frequently the Cuban ports. Wilkes apparently accepted the prevailing opinion that Mason and Slidell were safe from interference, but, keeping his views to himself, he was frequently seen by one of his subordinates to be deeply engaged in perusing international law books, doubtless occupied in seeking for precedents in justification of his contemplated action.

On November 1, 1861, Lieutenant J. A. Greer, navigating officer, brought word that Mason and Slidell were booked for England by the steamer Trent, which was to leave Havana on the 7th. On November 4th Wilkes took station in the narrow channel of Old Bahama, through which the Trent would naturally pass and where she could not escape being seen by the lookout. Early on the morning of the 8th Wilkes ordered the ship cleared for action, and when the Trent was sighted at noon, Wilkes gave his executive officer, Lieutenant D. M. Fairfax, written instructions to board the steamer Trent, with two armed cutters, when he was to make prisoners of Messrs. Mason, Slidell, and their secretaries, and seize any despatches which he might find. A round shot failed to stop the Trent, but a shell exploding in front of her bows brought her to. After protest, Mason and Slidell accepted the arrest, went on board the San Jacinto, whence they were taken to New York and later confined as prisoners at Fort Warren.

When Wilkes landed in New York he found himself again famous, the central figure toward which, even in that time of war, the attention of all was turned. He was lauded by almost every citizen, praised by nearly every journal, and was the recipient of most flattering attentions. Complimentary banquets were given to him in New York, Boston, and elsewhere.

The Secretary of the Navy, in a letter dated November 30, 1861, wrote: “Especially do I congratulate you on the great public service you have rendered in the capture of the rebel emissaries… Your conduct in seizing these public enemies was marked by intelligence, ability, decision, and firmness, and has the emphatic approval of this Department.” With reference to the omission of Wilkes to capture the Trent, the Secretary says: “The forbearance exercised in this instance must not be permitted to constitute a precedent hereafter for infractions of neutral obligations.”

Congress was not then in session, but it met a few weeks later, when almost the first act of the House of Representatives was to pass a joint resolution which declared that “the thanks of Congress are due, and are hereby tendered, to Captain Wilkes, of the United States Navy, for his brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct in the arrest and detention of the traitors, James M. Mason and John Slidell.”

The hostile attitude of Great Britain, which country to many Americans appeared quite ready on slight pretence to acknowledge the Southern Confederacy, gave great anxiety to the administration. The astute Lincoln and the diplomatic Seward, supported by the patriotic Sumner in the Senate, and other conservative men in the House of Representatives, after due correspondence acceded to the demands of Great Britain that the prisoners should be released. Seward, however, justified Wilkes’s action in the main as legal, but said that he erred in releasing the Trent; and by constituting himself as a court, and in not bringing the steamer before an admiralty court as guilty of carrying articles contraband of war, had acted irregularly. The United States declined to apologize, as no offence to Great Britain was intended, and forbore from claiming against England the right of search which that nation had so persistently exercised.

The Naval Committee of the Senate reported without amendment the resolution of thanks to Wilkes, but deemed it best to postpone it indefinitely. The ordinary citizen did not share the conservative, and it may be said the very wise, course of the administration, and the sentiment throughout the country was very generally one of national pride that under doubtful circumstances an American sailor had dared rather too much than too little for the dignity and safety of his country. Wilkes, himself, when told that possibly this act would cause him to lose his commission, said that he deemed his seizure of the commissioners simply a patriotic duty, and if needs be was willing to be sacrificed for his country. He continued to perform efficient service during the war, despite his advancing years. In 1862, while in command of the Potomac flotilla, he shelled and destroyed City Point, and in command of a special squadron to maintain the blockade, captured and destroyed many blockade-runners.

With the closing of the war, and his retirement from active service, Wilkes returned to the scientific pursuits which had always engrossed his mind, and full of years and honor, died at Washington, February 8, 1877.

Of his early scientific labors it may be said that they had contributed in no small degree to the establishment of a national institution of international repute, the Naval Observatory.

For his important additions to the knowledge of the world, and especially for his ever-zealous war services, the memory and life of Charles Wilkes will ever abide fresh and honored in the hearts of his countrymen.

VIII

JOHN CHARLES FRÉMONT,

The Pathfinder

The discovery and exploration of the trans-Mississippi region had many phases, the outcome of different conditions and varying individual efforts to determine the extent, possibilities, and resources of the undeveloped half of the American continent. The seamanship of Gray, the enthusiasm of Lewis, the courage of Clarke, the assiduity of Pike, the enterprise of Ashley, Wyeth, Sublette, Bonneville, and other trappers and traders, had done much to make known to the pioneer and settler the advantages and promise of the great West, and had roughly delineated the routes of travel best suited for the emigrant in his westward march.

In time many urged that the government of the United States, so long shamefully negligent of its magnificent acquisitions by purchase, discovery, and settlement, should enter in and possess its own. This, however, necessitated, first, a systematic examination of the physical features of the West to such an extent as to render possible its general and authoritative description; second, the granting of lands or homesteads to such of its daring citizens as might be willing to venture their lives as settlers in these remote regions.

Among public men who urged most strongly such action was one of the most distinguished of our Western statesmen, Thomas H. Benton, first Senator from the new and growing State of Missouri. He persistently advocated the settlement of the lower Columbia by Americans, the enforcement of the title of the United States to the Pacific Coast region from California northward to the forty-ninth parallel, and in 1825 he presented in the Senate a bill authorizing the use of the army and navy to protect American interests in Oregon.

In season and out of season Benton opposed the joint occupation of Oregon by England and America, unfailingly supporting every measure which promised to fill its fertile valleys with American settlers. So dominant was this idea in Benton’s career that artistic skill has fittingly shaped his statue in St. Louis with its bronze hand pointing west, with his prophetic words carved on the pedestal, “There is the east. There is India.”

In his efforts to put his ideas into practical shape, Benton threw the great weight of his influence as a Senator toward the employment in such explorations of a member of his family by marriage, John Charles Frémont, whose ability and inclinations specially suited him for the scientific examination and exploration of the trans-Mississippi region.

Born January 21, 1813, at Savannah, Ga., Frémont entered Charleston College, where his disregard of discipline prevented his graduating, although the faculty later honored him with the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts. Well grounded in the classics and familiar with the ordinary astronomical methods of determining latitude and longitude, Frémont visited South America on the United States ship Natchez, as a teacher. Later, appointed a professor of mathematics in the navy, he declined the position to accept more congenial service as assistant engineer of the United States Topographic Corps, where he had experience in preliminary surveys of railroads and also in a military reconnoissance among the Cherokees in Georgia. Commissioned in the United States Army, in 1838, as second lieutenant in the Topographic Corps, his initial service was fortunately as principal assistant to I. N. Nicolet, in the survey of the country between the Mississippi and the Missouri. Nicolet, an able and distinguished engineer, was the first explorer in America who made general use of the barometer for determining elevations of the great interior country, and his map of this region was one of the greatest contributions ever made to American geography.

In 1841 Frémont married Jessie Benton, a daughter of Senator Benton, through whose influence Frémont was assigned to the command of the expedition ordered to explore the country between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains on the line of the Kansas and Platte Rivers.

In May, 1842, while Frémont was on the frontier making preparations for the journey, there came, as Mrs. Frémont relates, an order recalling him to Washington. Mrs. Frémont sent a special messenger to her husband, advising him to move immediately for good and sufficient reasons, to be given later. Meanwhile, holding the letter, she wrote the colonel who had given the order for the recall that she had neither forwarded the order nor informed Frémont of it, as she knew that obedience thereto would ruin the expedition. On such a small thread of circumstances hung the fate of his first separate command, which brought Frémont into such great prominence in connection with the exploration and development of the Pacific Coast region.

The journey of Frémont lay up the North Fork of the Platte, through South Pass, into Wind River Valley, his march being marked by the usual experiences of hardship and suffering inseparable from the time and region. The most notable event of the journey was the ascent of the main and highest peak of the Wind River range, now known as Frémont’s Peak. Their first attempts were unsuccessful, the party suffering from great cold, excessive fatigue, and mountain fever resulting from the rarity of the air. Frémont, however, persevered and succeeded. He describes the final ascent as follows:

“We reached a point where the buttress was overhanging, and there was no other way of surmounting the difficulty than by passing around one side of it, which was the face of a vertical precipice of several hundred feet. Putting hands and feet in the crevices between the blocks I succeeded in getting over it, and when I reached the top found my companions in a small valley below. Descending to them, we continued climbing and in a short time reached the crest. I sprang upon the summit and another step would have precipitated me into an immense snow-field five hundred feet below. At the edge of this field was a sheer icy precipice, and then, with a gradual fall, the field sloped off for about a mile until it struck the foot of another lower ridge. I stood on a narrow crest about three feet in width. As soon as I had gratified the first feelings of curiosity I descended, and each man ascended in turn, for I would only allow one at a time to mount the unstable and precarious slab, which it seemed a breath would hurl into the abyss below. We mounted the barometer in the snow at the summit, and fixing a ramrod in the crevice, unfurled the national flag to wave in the breeze where never flag waved before.” The elevation of this summit, as determined by Frémont, was 13,570 feet.

His success on this expedition caused his most favorable reception by the War Department on his return to the States.

Frémont’s second expedition contemplated the connection of his first explorations with those made by Captain Wilkes on the Pacific Coast, so as to give a connected survey across the interior of North America. The party, which left Kansas City May 29, 1843, consisted of forty men, equipped with twelve carts for transportation and a light wagon for scientific instruments. The route followed was up the valley of the Kansas River, thence by the South Fork of the Platte to the vicinity of the present city of Denver. After considerable hesitation a northerly route was taken, skirting the westerly limits of the great Laramie plain, which brought Frémont to the emigrant trail in the vicinity of the South Pass. The volume of travel toward the Pacific Coast even at that early date may be estimated from his description of the Oregon trail as “a broad smooth highway where the numerous heavy wagons of the emigrants have entirely beaten and crushed the mountain sage.”

Crossing Green River and following up Ham’s Fork, Frémont reached the valley of Bear River, the principal tributary of Great Salt Lake, which was filled with emigrants travelling to the lower Columbia River. Frémont expressed his surprise at the confidence and daring of the emigrants as he met in one place “a family of two men and women and several children travelling alone through such a country so remote from civilization.” Turning south from this point and quitting the travelled road Frémont visited the Great Salt Lake, of which he says: “Hitherto this lake had been seen only by trappers, who were wandering through the country in search of new beaver streams, caring very little for geography; its lands had never been visited, and none were to be found who had entirely made the circuit of its shores, and no instrumental observations or geographical survey of any description had ever been made anywhere in the neighboring region. It was generally supposed that the lake had no visible outlet, but among the trappers, including those in my own camp, were many who believed that somewhere on its surface was a terrible whirlpool, through which its waters found their way to the ocean by some subterranean communication.”

The lake was eventually reached from the lower part of Bear River in an india-rubber canoe, by means of which Frémont also landed on a mountainous island near the centre of the lake, where from an elevation of eight hundred feet he was able to determine with considerable accuracy the contours and extent of this remarkable body of water. Instead of a tangled wilderness of shrubbery teeming with an abundance of game, as the party expected, the island proved to be broken, rocky land, some twelve miles in circumference, on which there was neither water nor trees; a few saline shrubs and other hardy plants formed the only vegetation. The lake is described as being enclosed in a basin of rocky mountains, which sometimes leave grassy fields and extensive bottoms between them and the shore, while in other places they come directly down to the water in bold and precipitous bluffs. He speaks of the water of the lake being at a low stage and the probabilities that the marshes and low ground are overflowed in the season of high water. Frémont says that “we felt pleasure in knowing that we were the first who in the traditional annals of the country had visited the island and broke with joyful sounds the long solitude.” But in view of the dissipation of his dream of fertility he named it Disappointment Island.