judgment would be far from correct, for it was rare that anyone was killed or even seriously injured in the otherwise exciting encounters which passed under the generic name of revolutions. They were usually nothing more than political" squabbles," precipitated by the leaders for personal or sectional ends, and engaged in by the people for the sake of diversion.

At the time of the crisis, 1846, Pio Pico was governor, with his capital in the south, while General Castro, the head of the military department, was the official magnate of the north. The two men and the two sections were in a chronic state of jealousy and ill will toward each other. Three foreign nations, Great Britain, France, and the United States, were represented at Monterey by consuls, who had general charge of their countries' interests. Thomas O. Larkin, a New Englander, who had long been absorbed in the California trade, was the American consul, having been appointed to the office in 1843. He still continued his commercial operations, had a wide acquaintance among the leaders of California, spoke their language, and enjoyed the respect and confidence of all natives.

The Mexican government was using its best endeavors to secure the coöperation of California in the struggle with the United States which was preparing, and the officials in the territory were ordered to put the country into a state of defence to prevent the further influx of Americans and to arouse in the people a sentiment of patriotic zeal. Such was the condition of affairs in California at the end of the year 1845, when the plans for the conquest of California took definite shape, and the leading figure in the region was John C. Frémont.

Captain Frémont, who made his first expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1842, took the route to Oregon in the following year, visiting Fort Vancouver for supplies, and gathering some information concerning the western district. He then returned to the Dalles and took up his homeward journey by a new route. This lay first northward,

by way of the Des Chutes valley, and over the uplands to the Klamath, then southeast toward the Humboldt, of which he was in search. Frémont, suffering from the deep snows and cold of February, crossed the Sierras into California to recruit his animals and arrived with his party at Sutter's Fort, March 8, 1844. Resting for two weeks at Sutter's, and securing such supplies as he needed, the party proceeded south by way of the San Joaquin, the Tulare, and by one of the passes through the Sierras; then east to Utah Lake and the Missouri. His report, printed in 1845, was widely distributed and added greatly to the popular knowledge of Far West geography.

Before his book was published the captain again started for the West. He left the frontier in May, 1845, with a party of about sixty picked men and moved up the line of Arkansas River.

The instructions under which Frémont made this third journey have never, as a whole, been given to the public, but one object of the expedition, as gathered from his contemporaneous writings, was to explore what he termed "the Great Basin," the region lying between the Rockies and the Sierras. This he achieved to his entire satisfaction. In a letter written January 24, 1846, he says that he left the main body of his command and crossed this supposed sandy desert, between the parallels of thirty-eight and thirtynine degrees, with a volunteer party of fifteen men. He found its actual character totally at variance with every description. It was traversed "throughout its whole exby parallel ranges of lofty mountains, their summits white with snow (October) while below the valleys had none. Instead of a barren country, the mountains were covered with grasses of the best quality, wooded with several varieties of trees, and containing more deer and mountain sheep than we had seen in any previous part of our voyage." The larger party, commanded by Theodore Talbot and guided by Joseph Walker, had taken another route, apparently further north, and met Frémont at the eastern foothills

tent

of the Sierras. From this point Talbot was sent southward along the base of the mountains, with instructions "to cross into the valley of the San Joaquin, near its head." His party crossed the Sierras at Walker's Pass and camped on Kern River just before the end of the year. Frémont, meantime, with his fifteen men, crossed the mountains almost due westward from the rendezvous, entering the Sacramento valley on the general line of the emigrant road from Truckee River and emerged at Sutter's Fort on the 10th of December. He had, as he wrote, opened a new route, by which he could "ride in thirty-five days from the Boiling Spring River [on the sources of the Arkansas] to Captain Sutter's; and for wagons, the road is decidedly better." Frémont mentions thus what may have been a second object of the expedition, the opening of a better road from the United States into the Sacramento valley.

A third object, clearly stated by Frémont as well as by Secretary of War Marcy, was to open a new route from the vicinity of Klamath Lake into the Willamette valley, through a pass which Frémont had learned about during his second journey. By exploring this pass he expected to make "the road into Oregon far shorter, and a good road, instead of the present very bad one down the Columbia." He adds: "when I shall have made this short exploration I shall have explored from beginning to end this road to Oregon."

It has been assumed by writers on this subject that these three constituted all the legitimate scientific purposes of the expedition. But from statements made by Captain Frémont and others in numerous letters, and from his actual movements after reaching California, it seems very clear that his instructions covered a fourth object. Frémont declared, in 1884, that his main object in the expedition of 1845-1846 was to "find the shortest route for a future railroad to the Pacific, and especially to the neighborhood of San Francisco Bay." Judging from the available contemporary evidence, this statement seems to be correct.