La Barge saw a great deal at one time and another of General Fremont. He first met him when he went up the river as the assistant to the distinguished geographer and scientist, Jean I. Nicollet. Nicollet’s party traveled on the boat which La Barge was piloting. At Leavenworth there was an extremely rapid current, and La Barge expressed a curiosity to know what its velocity was. Nicollet at once sent Fremont to measure it. It was found to be eleven miles per hour in the swiftest place. La Barge’s opinion of Fremont was that which seems to have universally prevailed in St. Louis--that he was a greatly overrated man, and that his success was due more to his fortunate marriage than to his own merit. We must dissent, in a measure, from this view. In his proper niche, Fremont was a great man. He found that niche in the work of exploring the unknown West. In the faculty of making the unknown known, of doing work in such a way as to make its results popular with the public, in spreading a knowledge of the Great West throughout his country and throughout the world, he stood without a peer among the explorers of that region. In the broader field of national politics or great military responsibility, he was wading beyond his depth. [Sidenote: THOMAS H. BENTON.] Thomas H. Benton, Fremont’s father-in-law, and Missouri’s greatest statesman, was an intimate acquaintance of Captain La Barge, the two men having known each other from La Barge’s childhood until Benton’s death. Captain La Barge had a great admiration for the bluff old Senator, although he did not like the way in which he used his powerful influence in shielding the American Fur Company on so many occasions from the just consequences of their illegal acts. Benton was a frequent passenger on the Missouri River boats, and La Barge saw a great deal of him there. He recalled particularly a trip which the Senator made as far up as Kansas City, where he went to meet Fremont, who was returning from the West. It was a very interesting voyage. The people all along the river wanted to see him, and calls for “Old Bullion” compelled him to appear at every landing place. He made numerous addresses, and the boat was frequently delayed to permit this interchange of greetings between the people and their distinguished servant. Benton was in the pilot-house a great deal,--as every traveler in those days liked to be,--and La Barge never forgot his expression of deep faith in the future of the West, so unlike that of most of his Congressional associates from east of the Mississippi. He said once to Captain La Barge: “You will live to see railroads across to the Pacific, and up the Missouri beyond the Great Falls.” La Barge, a much younger man, replied that he scarcely expected to see that in his lifetime. “But I have,” said the Captain, in telling of this conversation, “and I have seen far more than even Senator Benton dared to hope for.” In the same line of thought the Senator once said, as he