Sample Text, Chapters I and II Only

The Story of John Charles Fremont
The Pathfinder
For Young Americans

CHAPTER I. A START IN LIFE

PAGE 135 - 144

The father of John Charles Fremont, when a young man, was driven from his home in France by political troubles. He sailed away from his native country, hoping to find refuge in the island of San Domingo, or Haiti.

On the way across the ocean the vessel was captured by a British cruiser, and Mr. Fremont was made a prisoner of war. After some time, however, he escaped, and finally landed in America and went to the little town of Norfolk, Virginia.

There he made his living by teaching French and weaving baskets. Sometimes he earned money by decorating the ceilings of houses in an artistic fashion.

All this time he was hoping and planning to return to France.

One day he met a beautiful Virginian girl, whom

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he soon married. After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Fremont decided to travel among the Indians in the South. There were many Indians in that part of the country in 1812. There were no railroads then, and the only way of traveling was in carriages. Since there were no hotels, travelers had to carry their own beds, dishes, tents, and servants with them, and camp out.

In 1813, while Mr. and Mrs. Fremont were on one of these interesting journeys, their first son, John Charles Fremont, was born, in Savannah, Georgia.

The child's first nurses were Indian squaws, and his mother says it frightened her very much to see them hand the tiny baby about from one Indian to another. Perhaps this is one reason why John Charles Fremont was always interested in Indians, and never felt so much at home as when he was traveling.

While John Charles was still a young boy his father died, and Mrs. Fremont was left alone with her family of little children.

Mr. Fremont's brother tried to induce Mrs. Fremont to return to France with the children, as had been planned before their father's death; but Mrs. Fremont wished to remain in America

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among her own friends. She therefore soon removed to Charleston, South Carolina, and there made her home.

The young John Charles grew to be a large, and the writers say, a good, boy. He was unlike some other boys who became great men, notwithstanding their idleness in school; for he studied with all his might, and learned more quickly than any other boy in his class.

He mastered the most important rules of Latin in three weeks, and did equally good work in Greek and mathematics.

It was very easy for him to commit to memory chapter after chapter from the Bible. He sometimes learned three hundred verses by heart in a day.

There were two books which he always dearly loved : one was called “ The Lives of Great and Daring Men,” and the other was a Dutch book on astronomy. He could not read one word of the Dutch, but he pored over the maps and mathematical calculations, and in some way managed to learn a great deal about the stars.

Many great and famous people came to his mother's home, and their interesting lives made him wish to do great things himself. Of course his mother had many plans for his future.

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She hoped he would become a minister; but about this time he made one or two friends, with whom he went sailing and picnicking so often that his studies were neglected, and he was finally suspended from school.

We do not know whether the young man regretted this very much, but not long afterward a very dear sister died and a brother left home, and he suddenly realized that his mother needed his help and comfort. He renewed his studies at once, and worked so hard that in a short time he was made teacher of mathematics on the sloop Natchez, where David G. Farragut was then a young lieutenant.

He sailed on the sloop to South America and was gone two years.

On his return John Charles Fremont was twenty years old, and had made such a fine record that the college which had expelled him gave him “honors,” and allowed him to write the initials B. A. and M. A. after his name. A little later he was appointed to the frigate Independence, but declined the appointment, because he had found a more interesting kind of work.

This work was surveying the lines of two railroads to be built one from Charleston to Savannah, the other from Charleston to Cincinnati.

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Mr. Fremont had now his first taste of exploring, and he liked it very much. He tells of the good honey and milk he had to eat, and the comfortable homes of the farmers where the surveyors slept after their long days of tramping and working.

One day he was asked by the government to make a journey among the Cherokee Indians in Georgia. These Indians lived in homes of their own, which the government had given them more than fifty years before.

But now their land was becoming very valuable, and the government decided to take it away from them and remove them to some place west of the Mississippi River. Mr. Fremont was instructed to look the land over and see where it would be best to place an army, should one be needed to drive out the Indians.

END OF CHAPTER I.
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140 CHAPTER II

FIRST WORK FOR GOVERNMENT

Mr. Fremont and two other men were sent out on this expedition. At the end of the first day they came to an Indian village where a great feast was being held. The Indian men were very drunk and very ugly.

As soon as the Indian women saw the white men come into the village they hastened to conceal them in a corn-crib until their husbands should become sober. There they spent a very wretched night, for the drunken red men made a great deal of noise, and the corn-crib was alive with rats that ran all over the travelers as soon as they lay down to sleep.

In the morning they took a bath in the river. The water was so cold that their hair froze stiff while they were bathing. They often slept in Indian homes, or in tents beside a great camp fire. The little pigs that ran everywhere, growing fat on the chestnuts, made fine suppers for them.

Mr. Fremont liked the Cherokee Indians very much, and was sorry to see them driven from their homes.

After a few weeks his work was done and he returned home, where he learned that the government had still other duties for him to perform. President Van Buren desired him to go out to the country between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and obtain all the information he could about its resources and its people. He was to go with a Mr.


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Nicollet, who was a fine scholar and an experienced explorer.

Mr. Nicollet and Mr. Fremont met in St. Louis, where they were to obtain supplies and men for the journey.

This city at that time was the starting-place for every one who was going West, and a quaint and interesting place it must have been.

The houses stood far back from the street, in great shady yards, and were built with two porches, one above the other, called galleries.

On these galleries the people spent much of their time. Here they would have their early breakfasts of coffee, bread, and fruit, and here chairs were always set for friends and visitors.

There were no pavements in the streets, and throngs of Indians, Mexicans, trappers, hunters, priests, soldiers, and gay French people moved and loitered among the locust trees that lined the streets.

Here our friends stayed a short time, collecting the things needed for their journey. At last, when everything was ready, they left St. Louis for Fort Snelling, which was then on the border of the Indian lands in Minnesota.

At Fort Snelling they spent much time in

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putting their instruments in order. They carried chronometers, thermometers, barometers, and telescopes with them, and also some instruments they could not understand at all. They “rated “ the chronometer; that is, they found out how much time it lost or gained in a day. “They also tested the other instruments, to make sure they were correct.

Then they set off by land with all their supplies in one-horse carts. They drove slowly along the banks of the Minnesota River, drawing maps, sketching the curious things they saw, and outlining the river's course.

Each man had his work.

One asked about the lakes and rivers, and learned their Indian names. Another collected specimens of plants. Mr. Fremont sometimes prospected for minerals and watched the stars, and made astronomical observations.

Day after day they traveled on. Indians followed them, and they found it necessary to be on their guard day and night, lest some of them might be unfriendly.

They visited the red pipe-stone quarry. This red stone was very precious to the Indians. They made their pipes and images of it, and all tribes

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were permitted to use it, even when they were at war with the Sioux, in whose land it lay. The Indians said that the “ Spirit of the Quarry “ always spoke in thunder and lightning to those who visited the quarry; and when our party arrived there they were drenched by a heavy thunder-shower, which burst upon them as if the Spirit were indeed angry.

Now they turned north. The Indians received them kindly wherever they went, and often tried to entertain them with games and hunts.

In one great hunt all the inhabitants of an Indian village took part. It was arranged by a white man who was a fur-trader, and it lasted several days. Each morning all the Indians and white men rode out for the hunt, leaving the Indian women to move the camp several miles across the country to a spot chosen by the chief.

At night when the tired and hungry hunters came into the new camp they would find great fires burning. Over each fire large pieces of venison were cooking on pointed sticks, or in huge kettles filled with corn and rice.

One night the men, being aroused from their sleep, saw a prairie fire

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raging and rapidly approaching. They snatched brands from their camp fires, set fire to the grass nearest to them, and quickly cleared a large space around their tents.

Over this clear space the rushing flames leaped, and when the campers dared to look up they saw that the fire had passed on, and was roaring and crackling in a grove of trees not far away.

Soon after this the party returned to St. Louis to get ready for another expedition that was to be undertaken the following year. On this new expedition they intended to explore the Missouri Valley and the great Northwest.

END OF CHAPTER II.

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