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Show THE GREAT BASIN OF UTAH. 25 Spring. He makes Fremont to explore the route along the Humboldt River and Carson Lake, whereas Kern was the topographer of the party which explored that route, with Walker as guide; and Fremont explored the route more directly across the Basin to Walker's Lake, which Warren as erroneously has attributed to Kern and Walker. The Geographical Memoir of Fremont, as already stated, does not enter into the particulars of his ex-ploration of 1845 and 1846; but only gives a general view of the Great Basin. This view is graphic, and, in the main, so far as the present writer's observations have extended, is just, and corrects some errors into which, from imperfect data, he had fallen, in his pre-vious explorations. The idea which he had enter-tained of the Basin's being made up of a system of small lakes and rivers scattered over a flat country, was found to be entirely untrue, and, on the contrary, he found that the mountain structure predominated. The long stretch of mountain range, however, which on his map is represented as being the continuation westwardly of the Wasatch Range, and as separat-ing the waters of the Great Basin from those of the Colorado, is evidently hypothetical, and has not been corroborated by subsequent explorers. This view, however, in no way militates against the theory and fact of the Great Basin system as one distinct from the valley of the Colorado; because, as is to be seen in many instances in the Basin itself, a very slight rim or rise of ground may be the divide between dis-tinct sub- basin systems. The next authentic account, in the order of dates, |
