Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 6.djvu/179

GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT 341 of George Washington. M. Fremont's marked fondness for travel and advent- ure was shared by his wife. They took long journeys through the wild southern country, stopping at Indian villages, often sleeping by camp-fires. On one of these expeditions, when making a halt at Savannah, Ga., John Charles, their first child, was born, January 21, 181 3. M. Fremont died a few years after. The boyhood of John Charles was spent in Charleston. It is well to re- member, in a study of his life, his French blood and early southern environment. His first choice of a profession was the law. At the age of fourteen he became a student ui the office of John W. Mitchell, who placed him under a private tutor, Dr. Roberton, who understood the lad thoroughly and developed his char- acter in the right direction. Dr. Roberton seems to have first discovered what was made plain in Fremont's after-life the makings of a poet, and the foresight of a prophet. Translating the story of the battle of Marathon in the Greek class, young Fremont catches the spirit with which it was told by Herodotus, and writes verses in protest of tyranny which are published in one of the Charles- ton papers. "In one year," wrote his tutor, " he had read four books of Caesar ; Cornelius Nepos ; Sallust ; six books of Virgil ; nearly all of Horace, and two books of Livy. In Greek all of Grasca Minora, about half of the first volume of Grasca Majora, and four books of the Iliad." At fifteen he enters the junior class of Charleston College. At sixteen he is confirmed in the Episcopal Church, entertaining at that time thoughts of entering the ministry. His steady progress is interrupted by his first love affair ; his absorbing passion so gets the better of his common sense, that he neglects his books and classes and is expelled from college. We next find him teaching higher mathematics, acting as private tutor, and devoting his evenings to the charge of the Apprentice s Library, a school in Charleston. At twenty years of age he received the appointment of teacher ot mathematics, and his long connection with the United States Army had its beginning ; his post the sloop of war Natchez. He was to go on a cruise of two years and more along the coast of South America.. Here was a chance for him to unfit himself for further advancement, but he improved his time upon the cruise to the utmost, and his diligent scholarship won for him the double degree of bachelor and master of arts from the college from which he had been ex- pelled. His application for a mathematical professorship in the Navy resulted in his passing the severe examination, and in an appointment to the frigate Inde- pendence. He declined the office, however, having decided to become an en- gineer, to join Captain Williams's survey of the mountain passes between South Carolina and Tennessee. There was talk of a railroad between Charleston and Cincinnati in those days. That was Fremont's first experience in exploring expeditions. The corps lived chiefly in camp. The survey was in wild mountainous regions of the un- explored South, among Indians sullen against the Government. Fremont liked this kind of a life. He enlisted under Captain Williams the second time in 1837, as assistant engineer, going with him upon a military reconnoissance of the Cherokee country in Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. A war cloud was