calculations had not been made, and even the identical map (which he would thus seem disposed to hold me responsible for the blunders of) both drawn and engraved. Morever, I had understood from Capt. Wilkes's first letter that his charts had been published the year previous to my application to him, and it would seem that his positions ought to have been calculated previous to the making of his charts. The truth is Capt. Wilkes led me into error. According to his present showing, he discovered very soon after that he had done so. I must be permitted to believe that had his desire to oblige me been so strong as is now intimated, he would have taken the trouble to apprise me of his mistake, which he never did. I discovered the error of the position he had given me in the Sacramento valley from observations made during my late tour. I did not suspect, and had no reason to suspect, that he had made any subsequent rectification, and hence I was led into the second error (if it be an error) of supposing the coast was still erroneously laid down. I ascertained, as far as I was able to make inquiry, that no chart of the coast had been issued by Beechey or Belcher; I knew that Capt. Wilkes. was the last surveyor there; I knew that my observations differed from what he had furnished me as his by about twenty miles, in the Sacramento valley, and took it for granted that forty miles further west the same disagreement would exist; and so corrected the outline of my map according to my own observations. The report shortly after brought in by one of our public vessels of the wreck of a ship on the coast in consequence of error in the charts in common use, it was considered good reason for making known that a different projection of the coast would appear on the forthcoming map. If, then, there was any error in this, or in the manner of its announcement, it is attributable entirely to the wrong information given me by Capt. Wilkes, and his failure to inform me of the fact, if he afterwards discovered the error he had led me into, and which I had published on his authority; for I could not be expected to look to his publications for a correct delineation of the coast, when I knew that forty miles off he had made so large an error.

"But it is clear that, if Captain Wilkes informs us, he has made a publication of charts which give the necessary correction of the coast, he must have abandoned his own survey for the purpose, and proceeded entirely by the observations of others. He published his charts, according to his note of the 6th instant, inviting this controversy, 'in 1844. Now, it was in the win

ter of 1844-5, that he furnished me the positions which, according to his own showing, are so erroneous; and, still later, his own books contain the same and many corresponding errors. His positions, Capt. Wilkes informs us, were determined by the establishment of two observations-one at Nisqually, in Puget's Sound (the longitude of which, nevertheless, he does not furnish us with), and the other Sausalito, at the north side of the entrance to the Bay of San Francisco-and the reference of all the intermediate points to one or the other, and most of them to both of these main positions. Now, I will venture to say that all these 'intermediate points,' thus 'referred,' and as appears by the narrative, connected' and 'verified,' could not contain a common error, as they do, both in the map and text of Captain Wilkes's book, without a like error in the main positions. Hence if Capt. Wilkes published a correction of the coast, in chart, 1844, he must have done it on the labors of others; for he does not pretend to have discovered the erroneousness of his own calculations till after the issuing of his book in 1845.

"I apprehend, Messrs. Editors, that, notwithstanding the charts by Capt. Wilkes, and the labors of the British officers, whom he quotes and seems to have copied, when the whole truth comes to be investigated, it will be found that the proper position of the coast is not much better ascertained now than it was near sixty years ago. My occupation has been that of reconnoissance and survey inland, and my attention had not been directed to the state of the surveys on the coast beyond the very narrow inquiry-when I found my observations to be at variance with those of Vancouver, and still more so with those of Capt. Wilkes-whether Beechey or Belcher had published a corrected chart. Since the commencement of this correspondence,

however, I have given the subject some more examination. The Spanish navigator, Malaspina, to the merits of whom Humboldt bears such honorable testimony, and whose subsequent misfortunes and political persecution gave a peculiar interest to such portion of his labors as they did not destroy, made a survey of this coast in 1791. His longitudes, as far as I have been able to examine them, were nearly correct. Vancouver followed immediately after, and his surveys, disagreed with Malaspina's, threw the coast from a third to a half degree too far east; subsequent surveys, as far as they have made any change, are but little more than restoring the positions of Malaspina.

"As for Capt. Wilkes's renewed objection to having his 'small map,' taken for a test, I have to remark, that corresponding errors with those in his 'small map,' appear in his larger map of Oregon, and in the text of his narrative, and I am not acquainted with any other publications he has made. If he objects to having it said that he has suppressed or withheld his corrections, surely he ought to point where and when he has made them public.

"I wish again to make the remark that this controversy is not of my seeking. When I discovered the great erroneousness of the positions Capt. Wilkes had given me, I contented myself by quietly making the corrections on my map; I had received them in good faith as the result of his observations, and supposed them to be given the same way, and should have studiously avoided, therefore any mention of the descrepancy. Had I known, however, what he now informs us of, that he had shortly afterwards found those positions to be incorrect, and yet left me in ignorance of the rectification, to make an erroneous publication, I should not have been so silent.

"I stated in my first letter that I did not see why Captain Wilkes had thought himself called on to provoke this controversy, since whatever his merits in the publication of corrections on the coast of California, he could not claim any share in the making them. I am now still more at a loss to know why he

felt concerned in the matter, for it has become still more plain that he could not have supposed himself in any way wronged. His surveys not only do not make any corrections on the coast of California, but I feel warranted in saying that his entire surveys in Oregon and California, as far as they follow his own observations, are erroneously laid down in his published works. "J. C. FREMONT

"WASHINGTON, June 20th, 1848."

CHAPTER XIII.

FOURTH EXPEDITION-ENCAMPED IN KANSAS- -TERRIBLE JOURNEY THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS-FRIGHTFUL SNOW STORMONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY MULES FROZEN TO DEATH IN ONE NIGHT-STARVATION OF HIS COMRADES-MEETS AN UNEXPECTED FRIEND-REACHES THE RANCHE OF KIT CARSON-THRILLING LETTER TO HIS WIFE-ADVENTURE WITH

NAVAHOES INDIANS.

IN October, 1848, Fremont sat out upon his fourth expedition. But he went now at his own expense and not at the expense of the government; as an emigrant in quest of a home in the new State which he had emancipated, and not as an officer under orders. He went to prepare for the reception of his family, who were to join him in the spring, and he chose the winter for the journey as the season best adapted to make him acquainted with several of the most serious difficulties to be encountered in the construction of a highway to the Pacific, an enterprise of which he never lost sight in any of his plans for the future. He sat out on the 19th of October, and determined to make the line of his route along the head of the Rio Grande; first, because that route had never yet been explored, and secondly, because he had been informed by the mountaineers that there was a very practicable