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Show THE GREAT BASIN OF UTAH. 13 mountains, is said to have sent four men, in a sldn canoe, to explore the lake, who professed to have navigated all round it; but to have suffered exces-sively from thirst, the water of the lake being ex-tremely salt, and there being no fresh streams running into it. " Captain Bonneville doubts this report, or that the men accomplished the circumnavigation; because, he says, the lake receives several large streams from the mountains which bound it to the east." It would thus appear that Sublette in all probability was the person who sent out the four men referred to by Bridger, in a skin canoe to explore the lake; and, though Bonneville doubts the report of the occur-rence, yet the testimony of Bridger is corroborative of the fact; and the circumstance of its being an actual fact that there are no fresh - water streams coming into the lake on its west shore, along its whole length, certainly accounts for the thirst of Subletted party. It may be true that Subletted party did not discover the fresh- water streams running into the lake from the south and east; but this only shows that they did not explore the lake thoroughly; not that they did not explore it at all. The next authentic account of any discoveries wghin the Great Basin, we find given in " Bonne-ville's Adventures," by Washington Irving. Colonel Bonneville, U. S. Army, it would appear, was the first explorer to cross, in 1832, the Rocky Mountains into the valley of Green River, with wagons* * " Captain Bonneville now considered himself as having fairly passed the crest of the Rocky Mountains ; and felt some degree |