At Albuquerque, another little mud town without the grace of Santa Fe, I did more outfitting, and soon we were en route through the arid river valley, an empty stretch not fit for human occupation. A man could only wonder why the United States wasted its energies on such country. It was infested with hostile Indians, was worthless for crops other than what might be produced in a melon patch, and added nothing to the United States.
That first sunny afternoon south of Albuquerque, I invited Preuss to ride with me. We were, actually, at the rear, where we could talk peacefully. The reliable Godey was at the van.
“Ah, Charles, it’s good to be on our way again,” I began. “I should like to talk about California. You have a position with me, if you want it.”
“Doing what, Colonel?”
“The Las Mariposas, which Larkin bought for me. It will need some topographic mapping. It lies in the gold country, and if there’s gold on my property, I’ll need metes and bounds. The boundaries were rather vague. I’ll need to lay out wagon roads and locate villages and camps.”
He simply grunted.
“The gold stretches along the western flanks of the Sierra. My grant’s right there. Taos is buzzing with stories about the gold. With your geology and topographic skills, you could be a most valuable employee, and a well-paid one.”
“I have my own plans, sir. I’m sorry.”
That was a disappointment to me. I did not inquire into his plans but ventured some other business. “Alright. I have other business to transact. I plan to complete the railroad survey and intend that your topographic data should be completed as well. As soon as I’m settled out there, I’ll plan the rest of it. We’ll approach from the west, and connect where we left off.”
Again, he said nothing.
“We were so close,” I said, showing him two fingers a fraction of an inch apart. “If Williams had followed my instructions and taken us north, up the Saguache River, we would have topped the San Juan Mountains, descended into the drainage of the Grand, and continued west. That close,” I said.
“I’m very sure of it,” he replied.
“Well, I intend to finish it up.”
“In winter?”
“No, I’ve proved whatever needed proving. We’ll complete the link, and I’ll report to Senator Benton and his business friends.”
“I don’t think so, sir.”
I wasn’t sure whether he was turning down my employment or was simply skeptical about the route. “There might be a better route still farther north,” I said. “We can survey it.”
“No, sir. In California, I will be pursuing other matters. It is a territory that remains unmapped and little known.”
“I see. Well, I still plan to engage your services once we arrive.”
“I am honored by your attention, sir.”
The German seemed as amiable as ever, and yet something had changed. We had been colleagues all this while, in previous expeditions and this, but now he was clearly separating himself from me.
“I suppose you’ll be making your journal public,” I said.
“I keep an account for my own reference, Colonel Frémont.”
“I plan to write about this expedition at length. What especially pleases me is the strength and courage of my veterans, the ones like yourself who were with me in the conquest.”
He didn’t respond, and we rode some while through the mild day before we arrived at Socorro. Plainly, this Preuss was not the Preuss who had measured every mountain and valley we had crossed together and shared his every measurement with me.
At Socorro, the southernmost town in the area, I enjoyed the hospitality of Captain Buford, who commanded a detachment there and helped me complete my outfitting. While at his quarters I penned a brief letter to Senator Benton, wanting my father-in-law to be well apprised of all events. I made reference to the calamity of January but did not dwell on it beyond a bare account. There was no reason to dwell on it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Jessie Benton Frémont
Mr. Frémont’s letter reached me while I was the guest of Senora Arcé y Zimena, in Panama City. It was dated January 27, 1849, and was mailed from Taos, where my husband was a guest of our friend Kit Carson.
I read it and trembled. Before my eyes was an account of deprivation, cold, starvation, and death. And yet Mr. Frémont had escaped except for frostbite, and at this writing was recovering among friends. How close he had come, and he was only a third of the way to California. The letter had found its way to Saint Louis and had been forwarded downriver, ultimately arriving in Panama, where postal authorities diligently tracked me down. Mr. Frémont and I had known Senora Arcé’s nephew when he was his country’s ambassador to Washington.
I was most grateful for her hospitality. Panama City bulged with Americans and others from all over the world, waiting for transportation to the goldfields of California. They were camped throughout the old town, and many were sickened or dying from mysterious tropical ailments. I was fortunate to have the connection. The flies and biting bugs were terrible, but at least Lily and I had our own room, with a blue couch, hempen hammocks to sleep in, and a bit of privacy. It was a paradise compared with the steaming cauldron of the rest of the city.
We were all waiting for the mail steamer to California, which didn’t come week after week, while we hung on desperately, most of us without funds and no way to go forward or return to our homes. Somehow Lily and I had eluded the awful diseases that caught and killed the flood of immigrants. We had been transported across the isthmus, first by river canoe, and then on foot over the mountains, following a path overarched by jungle. Through the courtesy of so many of our countrymen, we made the trip unscathed, though I was certain I would never attempt such a venture again.
It was gold that changed everything. Mr. Frémont and I had planned all this before its discovery; we had no inkling of what was about to happen. I read and reread the letter, concealing it from Lily for the time being, looking for signs that he was past the worst of it. He seemed eager to put it behind him, and it was clear to me that he bore no guilt or responsibility in it; the fault lay in the incompetent guide he had been compelled to employ. It was Mr. Williams who had almost felled my husband and wrought the deaths of a third of his company. It was this Old Bill at whose doorstep this tragedy must be laid.
But that did not allay the tremor that shook me when I considered how close my beloved husband had come. I was stricken with anxiety, because he had yet to travel the main part of the trip and was gravely weakened. In time, once I could choose my words carefully, I did summon Lily and explained to her that the Frémont family had narrowly escaped disaster.
“Your father is safe and on his way overland, but on a different route, milder in wintertime,” I told her.
“He likes trouble,” she replied.
I almost reprimanded her for expressing such sentiment, but for some reason didn’t.
I ached to travel north, but all I could do was wait helplessly, like the teeming thousands living on the grubby old streets and filling the cemeteries. Street vendors sold monkey meat and fly-specked chickens and filthy fruit, and on these things my countrymen survived or sickened.
I was among them. A newspaper account of Mr. Frémont’s disaster in the mountains reached Panama City and greatly disturbed me. I fear the shock of Mr. Frémont’s catastrophe unhinged me, for next I knew I was gravely sick with brain fever, which also afflicted my lungs, and both a Panamanian and an American doctor attended me. I ceased to think or care, and scarcely knew where I was. There were no leeches to bleed me, but some croton oil from a ship at anchor blistered my chest and wrought a healing. I remained greatly enfeebled, and my condition worried Senora Arcé and others who knew me.
But one May day the Pacific mail steamboat did appear, with great fanfare, and a welcoming shot from the shore battery. A virtual brawl ensued as to who would occupy its few berths. The ship could accommodate eighty in its cabins and finally embarked wit
h hundreds more deck passengers, so jammed on board that each man’s bedding ground was a chalked-off rectangle. I was given a narrow cabin, but in that small, dank chamber my lung fever returned, and I arranged to live in a tent hung over a mast on the quarterdeck, which I shared with Lily and another proper woman. I felt better in the fresh sea air. I even came to enjoy the company of all those men as we sailed north, filled with hope and adventure. Actually, they all treated me with respect.
Still, those days were wrought with anxiety as well as hardship. There was not food enough on board to feed that mob, and the steward was lining his pockets by selling the ship’s tinned food at exorbitant prices, so many on board sickened just as they had been in Panama. It was rumored, too, that the steamer hadn’t enough coal to make San Francisco and might be set adrift or forced to use its spindly masts and pull out its canvas. Indeed, it was true. The ship reached San Francisco only by burning its deck planking.
Our first California stop was at the Pueblo de San Diego, and I so dreaded it and the news I might receive of Mr. Frémont that I reclaimed my old room and barricaded myself within, unable to face what I dreaded. But in time a knocking summoned me to the door, and with dread I received the news from the ship’s purser, who had been asked to convey it from someone on shore. Mr. Frémont had arrived in California safely, though his frostbitten leg troubled him, and was even then making his way north to rendezvous with me in Yerba Buena on the bay of San Francisco. I accepted the news with a flood of relief that left me unable to stay upright for a while.
We reached San Francisco, as it was being called, June 4, 1849, steaming through the strait my husband had named Golden Gate, into a vast inland sea. A cold fog swirled over the scabrous little village on our right. Before me stretched a graveyard of bobbing sailing ships, their rocking masts a forest beside the shore. Their crews had decamped for the goldfields. There was no pier, and our sole recourse was the lighters that took us to the shore. Scores of little boats swarmed us, and I peered anxiously into the cold mist, hoping to discover Mr. Frémont among them. But I was soon disheartened. Men everywhere, scarcely a woman in sight, but the colonel was not there.
The city climbed into hills just beyond, but all its vitality seemed to collect close to the water’s edge, where mountains of supplies, wagons, tents of all descriptions, and hundreds of males were congregated. If Mr. Frémont should not be present, I scarcely knew what I might do; Lily and I would be at the mercy of a lawless and savage lot of people. The mail steamer suddenly seemed a safer and better place than this cold, wretched camp along the inner shore.
Then a stranger, in one of those bobbing lighters below, hailed me, pointed directly at me until I was sure he was addressing me.
“I’m here to get you settled, Mrs. Frémont. Your husband saw to it. William Howard’s my name, and I’ve a room for you at Leidesdorff House. It’s up that hill, and it’s all there is for you.”
He helped us into his boat and took us to shore, where his hesitant and embarrassed sailors lifted us over the surf and settled us on the strand because there was no pier.
Mr. Howard did settle us in a single, well-furnished room in the private home. There was no wood for its parlor stove, and it was as cold and dank as any place I have ever been. I drew my shawl tight about me. But it had walls and a roof and was some distance from that fierce crowd below, and I accepted gratefully, thinking that Mr. Frémont had looked after his wife and daughter, even while some distance away. I was curious about the delay, how he could be elsewhere. Mr. Howard soon enlightened me.
“He went directly to Las Mariposas, madam. He needed to have a look at once, assess its value, and determine what to do if gold should be upon it. He’ll be along soon.”
I thanked the man, who immediately hurried off. The mail steamer was unloading cargo, and he needed to claim his own.
I learned that food was scarce, services impossible to find, firewood and lamp oil nonexistent, and I would have to fend for myself. Still, we were fortunate: in a canvas city, we had an adobe room and a roof over us, and I would see what I could see about food.
So Mr. Frémont was nearby. I did not yet understand the size of California and didn’t know that the grant he had purchased through the consul, Thomas Larkin, was far distant and not easily reached. He had told me it was seventy square miles, a size beyond my fathoming. How could one person hold so much of the earth?
“Well, Lily, we’re here; our trunks are here; we’ll look for food if you wish.”
“All those men,” she said.
“All those men,” I said. We had scarcely seen a woman.
Fearfully, we ventured out into a maelstrom of life, knowing there was no law to protect us from whatever savagery might exist. We would depend entirely on the civility of those around us. Plainly, gold fever had created the frenzy we walked through. Men stared but never paused as we passed by. We found canvas gambling halls, and I hurried Lily past them, and there were drinking stalls and hardware stalls, all open-air or canvas, where things might be purchased at outlandish prices. There were thousands of males arriving and nothing to sustain them. We found at last a vendor who had a little rice, which he was parceling out to eager buyers at a breathtaking five dollars a pound. Reluctantly, I bought some and tumbled it in my reticule for want of a sack. It looked like we would be eating rice, if we could find enough wood to boil it. On our way home I salvaged some wood from packing crates to cook our dinner.
Thus did we occupy our first day with the sheer necessities. I had only a small sum and dreaded that I might run out. Later, gentlemen callers arrived in great numbers, to my relief. The colonel had not been forgotten here, and many of them brought precious gifts of food, hoarded or garnered from somewhere. I swiftly learned that there was scarcely a young man in California tending herds, butchering meat, hoeing gardens, hauling produce to market, gathering eggs, feeding poultry, milling wheat, baking bread, cutting firewood, or milking cows. They had fled to the goldfields, leaving these tasks to old men and women, who were somehow carrying on and getting amazing prices for whatever foodstuffs they were able to deliver.
I learned to accept gratefully whatever was presented to us. We were soon entertaining army officers, diplomats, businessmen acquainted with Colonel Frémont, politicians, and strangers, some of them brandishing heavy leather sacks burdened with nuggets.
We endured day by day, in what surely was the coldest place I had ever lived, its fogs and skimpy sun laying an icy chill over the whole place, which was rapidly affecting my lungs, until I feared I would contract the lung fever once again unless I could escape.
Then one blessed day he appeared. I saw him walk quietly up the slope, survey the Leidesdorff House, and approach the door. My heart leapt. I wrapped a shawl about me and hastened to the door, admitting him into the house, into my arms, and into the quiet circle of my embrace.
Lily found us embraced, and I hastily retreated, my instincts always decorous. He paused, smiled at Lily, and clasped her hands in his own.
“You’re a young woman now,” he said.
She stared uncertainly at this father she had not seen for almost a year.
As I examined this husband of mine, I discovered the marks of his suffering. He was gaunt; his cheekbones seemed to protrude under parchment flesh. There were great pits below his eyes. His gray-shot brown beard, without a shred of gray before, now bore the streaks of hardship. He walked with a visible limp.
“I’ve heard you suffered greatly in Panama,” he said, his glance taking in the darkness that lingered under my eyes.
“She almost died,” Lily volunteered. “They blistered her chest. She’s still sick, and this cold air isn’t doing her any good.”
“Then we’ll move at once to Monterey,” the colonel replied. “This is not a proper place for my family.”
We three trailed into our icy room, and my cough told me that this place was a menace to me.
There was so much catching up to do. “You went to Las Maripo
sas?” I asked.
“I did. I know this much. There’s gold there. I hired some experienced men, Mexicans who know about these things, to prospect. And even while I was looking over this holding, they found gold everywhere.”
“Gold, gold?”
“Mrs. Frémont, I am going to be very rich.” He dug into his old coat and pulled out a small sack, and poured nuggets into my hand. Heavy, glimmering rounded bits of gold, cold to my touch. “This is from my land,” he said.
And that is how the news came to me.
I ached to hear his story, everything he could tell me about his harrowing journey across the continent. I ached to tell him my story, that odd, sinister trip from Chagres to Panama City, surrounded by parrots and monkeys and buzzing insects and serpents and a world I could scarcely fathom, in which we traveled in canoes propelled by near-naked men.
But within the hour, he was out the door. He said he needed to see people, make arrangements, hire miners, talk to lawyers.
I buried my yearnings in my heart and let myself bask in the joy of our reunion. But somehow I grasped that things were different. That this man, my husband, was not the man I had left in Missouri, but I didn’t know how or why.
Over the next days, I felt more than the chill of San Francisco Bay. I felt a growing chill that had settled around my heart. Mr. Frémont would gaze at me, smile as he often did, and yet he was not seeing me, not hearing me. His own gaze had turned inward, and I no longer knew what his thoughts might be, and he no longer shared his deepest yearnings.
We would sit at table, just the three of us, and he would say all the right things, thank me for the rice pudding, comment on the fog and cold, and yet nothing was the same. There were only two of us at the table, Lily and I. I did not know where he had gone. Was this the man I had eloped with? Was this the man who once lay beside me, talking through half the night? Was this the man whose journals I had transcribed day by day, sharing every moment? Was this my beloved?
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