While titled Fremont Lake, this composition is a copy of Miller’s earlier view of the Green River, which proved to be popular with his Baltimore clientele, leading him to paint several oil copies of it. “The point at which the sketch is taken,” he later commented, “commands a distant view of the rendezvous, the white Lodges of which are seen on the brink of the river. From this place after all sales of Peltries are completed, the trappers set out on their Beaver hunt;–here also they provide themselves with ‘Heaven’s last, best gift, to man’—which is had for a ‘consideration.’” (Ross, 1968, text accompanying plate 185) Miller also commented on the travelers “many difficulties, especially for those who tried to climb the highest peaks, only to experience ‘giddiness and headache, attended with vomiting,’ and turn back.”
