Note 54 — MEMORANDOM OF THE VOIGE BY LAND FROM FORT SMITH TO THE ROCKEY MOUNTAINS.

Las Cumbres Españolas—the celebrated Spanish Peaks. This is the place where, on the 15th of Nov., 1806, Pike’s party gave “three cheers to the Mexican mountains.” His map bears the legend: “Here the Mountains are first seen.” It is a curious fact, now forgotten by most persons, that the Spanish Peaks were called and supposed to be Pike’s Peak for some time—during the years that Pike’s Peak was called James’ Peak. Thus, Thomas J. Farnham, writing of 1839 in his Travels, New York, 1843, p. 41, says: “Pike’s peak in the southwest, and James’ peak in the northwest, at sunset showed their hoary heads above the clouds that hung around them.” Again, ibid., p. 42: “Sixty miles east of these mountains [in Colorado and New Mexico], and 50 south of the Arkansas, stands, isolated on the plain, Pike’s peak, and the lesser ones that cluster around it”—here also thus distinguishing it from James’ Peak, north of the Arkansaw. As I have said in my edition of Pike, p. 457, where I discuss the first application of Pike’s name to the peak which now bears it, the date has never been exactly ascertained; and here in Farnham we have the Spanish Peaks called by Pike’s name so late as 1839. I suppose it will be difficult, if not impossible, to trace the proper appellation of Pike’s Peak back of Frémont’s expedition of 1843-44. At the time I penned my note on the subject I did not know that the misapplication of Pike’s name to the Spanish Peaks had ever been current, and my reference to the verbal use of the term in the 30’s may have had no other foundation. Pike’s Peak having been first surmounted by Dr. Edwin James and his men, at 4 p. m., July 14, 1820, was formally named James’ Peak in Long, ii, 1823, p. 45, from Long’s MS. notes of July 15, 1820.