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Show 170 Valley company and Brier's own near brush with death, he would give such a favorable report of the country. The Reverend spoke before a meeting of the Pacific Railroad in San Francisco on August 23, 1853* His comments were included in Heapts Central Route. Brier's appraisal of the route across the Great Basin is very misleading and, in fact, blatantly false in places. In addition to citing the ease with which his party crossed the desert, be claimed to have found areas that were "very fertile" and a mountain range nearly one hundred miles long where they discovered creeks "large enough to run a mill."^ Brier summed up the country by saying that "if the country east of the Wah-satch is equal to that part of the route west of the Wahsatch, I have no hesitancy in saying that, for distance and locality, it has greatly the preference over every other."4 7 Another l e t t e r included in Heap's book was from Richard S. Wootton, a trapper from Taos, who claimed to have been over Walker's cutoff within the past year. In this l e t t e r dated October 22, 1853, Wootton falsely asserted that ) ft "there is a good wagon-road, and settlements a l l the way." There were others who contributed to the perpetuation of the Fremont myth. All of the most respected map makers were turning out maps based on Fremont's 1848 map. Mitchell's maps of 1854 and 1856 denoted the east-west range across the Great Basin; so did Colton's map of 1855, P i a t t ' s 1852, Bart-l e t t ' s 1854, Steptoe's 1855; Lippincott's 1857, and several others, a l l incor-y 49 porating Fremont's ideas into t h e i r maps. I t is l i t t l e wonder that t h i s misconception was becoming a fixed reality in the public mind. Brigham Young was no exception. As governor of the Territory, he had undoubtedly seen many of these maps and was familiar with many of the false reports. Like the myth of the Buenaventura, the Fremont delusion died slowly. Many mapmakers continued to show a shadow of the great east-west |
