. Life, explorations and public services of John Charles Fremont . alone as the only greatriver on the Pacific slope of our continent whichleads from the ocean to the Rocky Mountains,and opens a line of communication from the seato the valley of the Mississippi. Our cavalcade made a strange and grotesqueappearance, and it was impossible to avoid re-flecting upon our position and composition inthis remote solitude. Within two degrees of thePacific ocean, already far south of the latitudeof Monterey, and still forced on south by a des-ert on one hand, and a mountain range on theother, guided by
. Life, explorations and public services of John Charles Fremont . alone as the only greatriver on the Pacific slope of our continent whichleads from the ocean to the Rocky Mountains,and opens a line of communication from the seato the valley of the Mississippi. Our cavalcade made a strange and grotesqueappearance, and it was impossible to avoid re-flecting upon our position and composition inthis remote solitude. Within two degrees of thePacific ocean, already far south of the latitudeof Monterey, and still forced on south by a des-ert on one hand, and a mountain range on theother, guided by a civilized Indian, attended bytwo wild ones from the Sierra, a Chinook fromthe Columbia, and our own mixture of Ameri-can, French, German, all armed, four or five lan-guages heard at once, above a hundred horsesand mules, half wild, American, Spanish, andIndian dresses and equipments intermingled,—such was our composition. Our march was asort of procession—scouts ahead and on theflanks, a front and rear division, the pack ani- »$&W« SO! «*52H8* *3*l. GREAT BASIN. 177 mals, baggage, and horned cattle in the centre,and the whole stretching a quarter of a milealong our dreary path. April 25. In the afternoon, we were sur-prised by the sudden appearance in the camp oftwo Mexicans—a man and a boy. The nameof the man was Andreas Fuentes, and that ofthe boy (a handsome lad 11 years old) PabloHernandez. They belonged to a party consist-ing of six persons, the remaining four being thewife of Fuentes, the father and mother of Pablo,and Santiago Giacome, a resident of New Mex-ico. With a cavalcade of about thirty horses,they had come out from Puebla de los Angeles,near the coast, under the guidance of Giacome,in advance of the great caravan, in order totravel more at leisure and obtain better advanced as far into the desert as wasconsidered consistent with their safety, they halt-ed at the Archilette, one of the customary camp-ing grounds, about eighty miles from ou
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