Dr. Whitman's ride to St. Louis, by way of Santa Fé, will ever be memorable in the annals of Oregon, as well for its perils as for what it accomplished. He found our Government had just signed the Ashburton Treaty,[9] by which Oregon was still left out in the cold, without a boundary or the protection of our laws or flag. His great energy, however, enabled him to get together on the frontier an emigrants' train of two hundred wagons with which, as the leader of an army, he started back in the spring. It was these people whom Fremont had seen setting out, had tracked a thousand miles on their way, and finally come up with at their journey's end. As the Government would not lead, it now had to follow the people's grand march for the Pacific. With fresh horses Fremont pushed on down the left bank of the Columbia to the Dalles, Mount Hood towering in the distance. Here the whole river rushes through a long and narrow trough of rock, with so swift a tide that in the season of high water boats cannot stem it. A few miles below, Fremont emerged from the sterile and inhospitable region through which he had been travelling, upon a green spot in the valley, where, among groves of noble forest-trees, the Methodist mission had reared its two dwellings, its one schoolhouse, and its barn, cleared ground for planting, gathered to it a colony of Indians for instruction in the ways and religion of the whites, and so dropped in the wilderness the seed of Christian civilization. From the Dalles, Fremont sailed down the river to Vancouver, finding here still more emigrants, most of whom were waiting to cross over into the fertile Willamette Valley, which was then their land of promise. At this point Fremont's journey ended. His explorations had now connected with surveys conducted by Captain Wilkes from the Pacific coast. Fremont therefore turned homeward again, taking with him the most exact knowledge of the country traversed, so far obtained. FOOTNOTES [1] J. NICOLAS NICOLLET had first established the sources of the Mississippi. He had returned from exploring a considerable part of Minnesota and Dakota. [2] THE SOUTH PASS cuts the south part of the Wind River chain. [3] KANSAS CITY took its name thus early from its neighborhood to the Kansas River (though in Missouri), which has led many to suppose it is in Kansas. [4] ST. VRAIN'S FORT, a fur-trading post, in communication with Santa Fé by way of Taos. Under the mountains, seventeen miles east of Long's Peak. [5] FORT LARAMIE, first called Fort William (Sublette), built by Robert Campbell about 1835, since named from the Laramie Fork, near which it stands. Its walls were ranges of adobe houses, in the Spanish style, with bastions at the corners. The house tops or roof formed a banquette, on which, again, was set a row of palisades.