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Show COL. FEEMONT'S DETEEMINATION. 129 with snow four feet deep. The ascent bore an angle of forty-five degrees, and was at least one thousand feet from base to summit. Over this, Captain Wolff said it was also impossible to go. " That is not the point," replied Col. Fremont, " we must cross, the question is, which is most practicable-and how we can do it." I was acting as assistant astronomer at this time. After the council, Col. Fremont told me there would be an oc-cultation that night, and he wanted me to assist in making observations. I selected a level spot on the snow, and prepared the artificial horizon. The thermometer indicated a very great degree of .cold; and standing almost up to our middle in snow, Col. Fremont remained for hours making observations, first with one star, then with another, until the occupation took place. Our lantern was illuminated with a piece of sperm candle, which I saved from my pandora box, before we buried it; of my six sperm candles this was the last one. I take some praise to myself for providing some articles which were found most necessary. T,hese candles, for instance, I produced when they were most required, and Col. Fremont little thought where they were procured. The next morning, Col. Fremont told me that Parowan, a small settlement of Mormons, forty rods square, in the Little Salt Lake Vafiey, was distant so many miles in a certain direction, immediately over this great mountain of snow ; that in three days he hoped to be in the settlement, and that he intended to go over the mountain, at all hazards. We commenced the ascent of this tremendous mountain, covered as it were, with an icy pall of death, Col, Fremont leading and breaking a path; the ascent was so 6* |