Fremont's second trip was made in 1843, and seems to have been principally for the purpose of establishing a shorter route through the mountains than the Oregon Trail by the way of South Pass. He came in from the east, up one of the branches of the Republican River to Fort St. Vrain on the Platte, where he arrived July Fourth. On his way he no doubt approached the Platte between Akron and Fort Morgan, where there is a Butte named for him. He tried to learn from the hunters, trappers and Indians, of a trail west through the great range of mountains, but there was no one who could give him any information. Following the Platte from Fort St. Vrain, he reports finding a Fort Lancaster about ten miles up the river, which was the trading post of Mr. Lupton and had then somewhat the appearance of a farm. He passed through a village of Arapahoe Indians, probably near the mouth of Clear Creek, camped a little above Cherry Creek, and followed the Platte River to its entrance into the mountains at the canon. Needing meat, he went east on to the plains in search of buffalo; crossed Cherry Creek and the road to Bent's Fort; reached Bijou Creek, thence up to its head on the divide where he reported an elevation of seventy-five hundred feet--being the same altitude as at Palmer Lake, twenty-three miles west. Altitudinal ascertainings are taken by the simple process of looking at a watchlike, vest-pocket instrument, whose delicately adjusted mechanism is affected by air-pressure. From this place, he made a sketch of Pike's Peak, and is "charmed with the view of the valley of Fountain Creek," on which Manitou and Colorado Springs are located, and which he reached a little north of its junction with the Arkansas River. He speaks of finding at this point a "Pueblo" where a settlement of mountaineers were living, married to Spanish wives, "who had collected together and occupied themselves with farming, and a desultory Indian trade." They had come from the Taos Valley settlements, the Valley that was later named the Rio Grande. "Pueblo" was the name given by the Mexicans to their civilized villages. Taos is taken from the name of the Taos tribe of Indians. Returning he followed up Fountain Creek to Manitou Springs, thence north over the Divide to Fort St. Vrain.