who please may compare them, and see how entirely they convict each other. The letter to me, and the statement published by friends, would have been a quietus to the affair with me, if it had not been for the Baltimore letter. The letter to me, to be sure was untrue; but that was not my affair, provided nothing more was written. But I expected more-expected letters injurious to me in the Baltimore Sun and the Philadelphia Ledger, and so said at the time, and so the event has verified and that has forced me to make this brief exposition of the threefold falsehoods of the premeditated attack upon me in the Senate, its denial in a letter to me, and its insidious implied repetition in the Baltimore Sun, by asserting that he retracted nothing.

"To put the whole case into three words, it is this; Mr. Foote went out of his way when the subject was not before the Senate, to deliver a deliberately considered insult and defiance to me-then denied the insult and defiance, and disclaimed all disrespect, in a letter to me-then re-affirmed, by inevitable implication, the same insult and defiance in a letter to the Baltimore Sun, denying all retraction.

"With this summing up of the case and the precedent proofs, I leave the affair to the judgment of the public.

'September 30, 1850."

(Signed)

J. C. FREMONT.

Senator Foote has never publicly, nor so far as we know, privately, denied his complicity with the author of the letter to the Sun, nor did he ever in any way attempt to alter the position of the case as it was left by Col. Fremont's letter to the Baltimore journal. In a moment of undue excitement he had done a wrong for which he was ashamed publicly to apologize. Then to get credit for a triumph which he was not entitled to, he gets another person to write what he knew was not true. When convicted of both offences, he doubtless came to the conclusion that the most prudent course he could pursue towards Col. Fremont for the future, was to let him alone.*

* The Albany Atlas, of that date, commenting upon this affair says:— "Senator Foote, of Mississippi, spent the closing hours of the late ses

sion of Congress in penning a retraction to Senator Fremont for gratuitous insult rendered in debate.

"It seems that he chose to attribute to corrupt private motives, the solicitude of Mr. Fremont to secure the passage of the California Mining Regulation bills. Called to account for such language, and stigmatized for its use, he resorted to a blow. Challenged, he had recourse to a letter of explanation and retraction.

"This seems to be the tactics of the man-to give insult in public, and to make apologies for it in private. He threatened Mr. Hale, on his accession to the Senate, that if he should be caught in his State, he would be strung up to the first tree without law, and that he would assist in the execution; but he apologized to the New Hampshire senator in private. He insulted Mr. Seward, if not as grossly, at least with as much malignancy; but he deprecated the ill opinion of the New York senator, and privately cultivated a better acquaintance, as his guest, at frequent tea parties. He insulted Borland, of Arkansas, was knocked down in the street by him for it, and apologized-privately. He 'flared up' at Clay and Calhoun in the Senate, to fawn upon them servilely afterwards. Mr. Benton was the only man upon whom he could not play this double game. He had eulogized him, in this city, as the superior of Cicero and of Burke, and as the greatest of statesmen. He maligned him afterwards, in the Senate like a common drab. Afraid to come near the great Missourian to apologize for insult, he kept himself privately armed, and once drew a pistol on his adversary in the Senate, but retreated before the mere frown of an unarmed man. He ends where he began-in insult and retraction.

"He doubtless expects that the fame of his public ruffianism will reach his State, and that the story of his pliancy will remain secret. This accounts for these alternations of bullying, hazarded in public, with mean compliances in private.

"Possibly the retracting senator of the repudiating State, in this course but represents his constituency; but we wish, for the sake of the national decency, that Mississippi would carry her peculiar system of ethics a little further and retract or repudiate him."

CHAPTER XVII.

RETURN TO CALIFORNIA-ILLNESS-CANDIDATE FOR RE-ELECTION TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE GOES TO EUROPE PROJECTS HIS FIFTH AND LAST EXPLORING TOUR--HIS HARDSHIPS AND TRIUMPH-LETTER FROM PARAWAN-PRAIRIES ON FIRE-A CARELESS SENTINEL-HUERFANO BUTTE-A CHEERLESS NIGHT-FALL OF MULES DOWN THE MOUNTAINS-THREATENED BY INDIANS-HOW THEY WERE REPELLED-REDUCED TO EAT HORSE MEAT-THEY SWEAR NOT TO EAT EACH OTHER-FREEZING, DEATH, AND BURIAL OF FULLER-DECLINES A PUBLIC DINNER IN SAN FRANCISCO RETURNS TO WASHINGTON.

COL. FREMONT left again for California by the steamer which sailed first after the adjournment of Congress. Upon leaving Panama he had another return of the Chagres fever, which was so obstinate and enfeebling that he was prevented from returning to Washington the following winter. Meantime the Pro-Slavery party, strengthened by all the influence of the Federal Administration, had acquired such a controlling influence in California, that at the fall elections of 1851, the party which had advocated the proviso against Slavery in the State constitution, and with which Fremont was identified, was no longer in the majority, and a combination was successfully made to prevent his re-election. The

legislature went into an election of his successor in February, and after one hundred and forty-two ballotings, the convention adjourned until the 1st of January following, without making a choice. The candidates were Fremont, T. Butler King, Heydenfelt, Geary, Weller and Collier.

The next two years Col. Fremont devoted mainly to his private affairs. He took the preliminary steps necessary to perfect his title to the Mariposas tract, which he also surveyed and mapped; resumed his old business of cattle-drover, and in these pursuits gradually repaired a portion of the losses which his private interests had sustained while attending to public duties.

The negotiations to which his proprietorship of the Mariposas property gave rise took him to Europe in the spring of 1852, where he spent a year with his family, mostly in Paris, and where he had the satisfaction of observing that his fame had preceded him, and prepared for him an extremely flattering reception from several of the most eminent men of science and letters then living.

At the close of the session of Congress in March, 1852, through the good management of Senator Chase, an appropriation was made for the survey of three routes to the Pacific ocean with the view of getting some further information as a basis of legislation for a national highway between the Mississippi valley and the Pacific Ocean. When Col. Fremont heard of this, he determined to return, fit out an expedition on his own account, and complete the survey of the route which he had taken on his last expedition, from the point where he was led astray by his guide, and which he believed he could prove to be quite the best, if not the only practicable

route for a national road. For this purpose he left Paris for the United States, in June, and in August, 1853, set out upon his fifth and last trans-continental expedition.

Among the colonel's companions on this trip was S. N. Carvalho, Esq., of Baltimore, who went as the artist of the expedition.

We have been permitted to inspect his journal and correspondence, in which he has preserved graphic memoranda of the most striking incidents of this most perilous and eventful journey. The following extracts are quoted from these records:

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL AND LETTERS OF S. N. CARVALHO.

"Westport, Kansas, Sept. 15th, 1853.-To-day Col. Fremont, Mr. Eglostein, Mr. Fuller and myself arrived at Westport from St. Louis. We found the rest of the expedition here with the baggage and provisions-Col. Fremont immediately selected a camp ground in a wood near town, and had all the material conveyed there.

"20th.-All hands slept in camp last night, and a storm of rain drenched us, giving the uninitiated an inkling of what they had to expect. During the day, different lots of mules and horses have been brought in, from which Col. Fremont selected those he required. Holders of animals took advantage of our necessities and charged two prices, to which extortion we were obliged to submit.

"The men have all been armed with rifles, Colt's six-shooters, sheathknives, &c.; and the baggage arranged ready for packing to-morrow, when we are to have a trial start. Col. Fremont to-day engaged ten Delaware Braves, to accompany the expedition, under charge of Captain Wolf, a big Indian.'

"They are to meet us on the Kansas River near a Potawatomie village.

"21st.-Branding the animals with Col. Fremont's mark having been completed, we packed our animals, mounted our men, and started in high spirits. We proceeded about four miles to the Methodist Mission, and camped. Finding several things more required we sent back to Westport for them. My daguerreotype apparatus was unpacked, and views of