OCR Text |
Show 18 THE SHORTEST ROUTE TO CALIFORNIA. the waters of Great Salt Lake.* Forming an en-campment near the mouth of the Weber, he remained in the vicinity a few days, to make some observations and take a hasty sketch of the lake. Subsequently, in continuation of his expedition, he explored in the following winter from Fort Vancou-ver along the east base of the Sierra Nevada, or along what may be called the northwestern edge of the Great Basin, as far as the vicinity of Johnson's Pass, where he crossed the Sierra to the valley of the Sacramento. On his return east, in the spring of 1844, he turned the Sierra Nevada at its southern extremity, got upon the Spanish trail along the Mo-jave River in the Great Basin, crossed the Rio Virgen and other tributaries of the Colorado, and near Las Vegas de Santa Clara again entered the Great Basin, and explored it along its south and eastern edge up to the eastern portion of Lake Utah, where he left it and crossed the dividing ridge into the valley of Green River. Colonel Fremont's report shows that at the time of this expedition he had not seen the previously pub-lished history and map of the explorations of Bonne-ville, for had he done so he would probably not have been led into the error to which he attributed most of his hardships, of constantly looking for the hypotheti-cal river of Buenaventura, which, as he supposed, took its rise in the Rocky Mountains and emptied into the Bay of San Francisco, and upon which he ex- * Fremont's Report, Cong. Doc. No. 166, p. 151, published in 1845. |