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Show 132 TEAVELS AND ADVENTUEES LN THE FAE WEST. limits, suffering the privations of cold and hunger, and enervated by-disease. It seems as if Col. Fremont had been endowed with supernatural powers of vision, and that he penetrated with his keen and powerful eye through the limits of space, and saw the goal to which all his powers had been concentrated to reach. It was a feat of scientific correctness, probably without comparison in the records of the past. His firmness of purpose, determination of character, and confidence in his own powers, exercised under such extraordinary circumstances, alone enabled him, successfully, to combat the combination of untoward and unforeseen difficulties which surrounded him, and momentarily threatened the annihilation of his whole party. It is worthy of remark, and goes to show the difference between a person " to the manor born," and one who has " acquired it by purchase." That in all the varied scenes of vicissitude, of suffering and excitement, from various causes, during a voyage when the natural character of a man is sure to be developed, Col. Fremont never forgot he was a gentleman ; not an oath, no boisterous ebullutions of temper, when, heaven knows, he had enough to excite it, from the continued blunders of the men. Calmly and collectedly, he gave his orders, and they were invariably fulfilled to the utmost of the men's abilities. To the minds of some men, excited by starvation and cold, the request of an officer is often misconstrued into a command, and resistance follows as a natural consequence ; but in no instance was a slight request of his received with anything but the promptest obedience. He never wished |