with a young West Indian girl, whose raven hair and soft black eyes interfered sadly with his studies. He was absent for days together from the college, and repeatedly arraigned and reprimanded by the faculty, but to no purpose. Taking counsel of his heart, and not of his head, he set college rules at defiance. The faculty bore with him for a long time on account of his high standing in his studies, good scholarship, and abundant promise; but at length, irritated with his insubordination and bad example, for which no explanation was given, they expelled him from the college.

His application, though interrupted, had been vigorous while it lasted, and his acquirements, especially in mathematics, had been remarkable. After this abrupt and perhaps unfortunate termination of his collegiate career, he engaged in teaching mathematics, principally to senior classes in different schools, and also took charge of the "Apprentices' Library," an evening school under a board of directors, of which Dr. Joseph Johnston was president. But his career as an instructor was destined soon to be interrupted by a succession of domestic calamities which exerted an important influence upon his character. It was about this time that the death of his sister, then in her seventeenth year, occurred. His brother, who possessed an ardent and enthusiastic temperament and unusual ability, when but fifteen years of age, in consequence of an association with amateur players, had his taste turned to the stage, on which he imagined that fame and fortune are of easy acquisition. With these ideas, full of the generous impulses which belonged to his age and character, he suddenly, and without consulting his family, left his home to work out his fortune for himself.

His brief life gave little space for the employment of

energies which might have realized his youthful expectations. A few years after this an injury received at a riot in Buffalo permanently affected his health, and he returned to his mother and died in Charleston, when he was little more than twenty years old.

The death of his sister and the departure of his brother made a harsh inroad on the domestic quiet of his family, and gave a sudden check to the careless and unreflecting habits which had hitherto marked the conduct of the youthful Fremont.

He now awoke to the sober interests of life, as circumstances brought him into ruder contact with them, and he devoted himself to earnest labor, which, since then, has never been intermitted.

CHAPTER II.

CHOOSES HIS PROFESSION-MARRIES JESSIE BENTON.

IN 1833, the sloop of war Natchez entered the port of Charleston to enforce Gen. Jackson's proclamation against the Nullifiers. Being thence ordered on a cruise to South America, Fremont, then just twenty years of age, obtained through the Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Poinsett, the post of teacher of mathematics, and made in her, in that capacity, a cruise of some two and a half years' duration. Shortly after his return to Charleston, he received from the college, which had once expelled him-Dr. Adams being still its President -the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts.

A law had in the meantime been enacted creating Professorships of Mathematics in the Navy, and Fremont was one of a few among many candidates who successfully passed a rigorous examination before a board convened for this purpose at Baltimore, and was appointed to the frigate Independence. But he had in the meantime decided to labor in a profession which offered a larger field to energy and promised greater rewards, and for which his studies had particularly qualified him. He made his first essay as surveyor and

railroad engineer in an examination for an improvement of the railway line between Charleston and Augusta.*

About this time a corps of engineers was organized under the direction of Capt. G. W. Williams, of the United States Topographical Engineers (killed in the battle of Monterey), and Gen. W. G. McNeill, for the purpose of making a preliminary survey of a route for a railway line from Charleston to Cincinnati, and Fremont was appointed one of the assistant engineers, charged with the exploration of the mountain passes between South Carolina and Tennessee, where he remained until the work was suspended in the fall of 1837.

The parties engaged in this work occasionally stopped at the farm houses scattered through the mountains, but more frequently lived in camp, being provided with tents and all the necessary equipage for a camp life, of which this was Fremont's first experience. It was a country well calculated to make such first impressions durable and attractive-rough and wild, and abounding in those natural beauties which make the summer in that region particularly delightful.

He remained here until the suspension of the work. Capt. Williams being then ordered to make a military reconnoissance of the mountainous country comprehending portions of the States of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee, occupied at this time by the Cherokee Indians, Fremont accompanied him as one of his assistants. This was a winter survey-made hurriedly, in

*In after years, when the result of a court-martial had deprived Fre mont of his commission in the army, he was offered the presidency of this railroad, with a salary of $5,000.

anticipation of hostilities already threatening with the Indians and the surveyors at times were occupied, with a guide only, in making rapid reconnoissances on horseback, and at other times in slower operations, with a party of eight or ten men, with pack mules to carry their tents and provisions; it being a forest country, sparsely occupied by Indian farms. At night they felled trees, and made large fires of hickory logs, around which the panther's cry was occasionally heard, and owls hooted from the hemlocks. This was the first experience of a winter's campaign to one destined to go to the verge of human endurance in similar scenes. From this work, in the spring, he went directly to the Upper Mississippi, whence he set out on an exploring expedition over the northwestern prairies, under the command of J. N. Nicollet.

M. Nicollet was a French gentleman of distinction, a member of the Academy of Sciences, eminently distinguished for varied and extraordinary ability and for his scientific attainments, "whose early death," says Humboldt in his Aspects of Nature, "deprived science of one of her brightest ornaments." As a geographer, our northwestern country had for him a peculiar interest. It had been the field in which the earlier French discoverers and Catholic missionaries had labored, and it had been one of his most cherished wishes to visit the scenes of their labors and to draw together the scattered materials of a history which he thought redounded to the honor of his countrymen. With these views, and in the interest of geography, he had recently made an extended journey around the sources of the Mississippi, the map and materials of which had been adopted by our government, and he had been commissioned to make an