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Show 23 with discovering. Fremont had entered this region deluded by the myth of the Buenaventura River, and his report shows that he expected to find the stream at any moment: In our journey across the desert, Mary's Lake Ebbe Humboldt Sink] and the famous Buenaventura River were two points on which I relied to recruit the animals and repose the party. Forming, agreeably to the best map in my possession, a connected water-line from the Rocky Mountains to Pacific Ocean, I felt no other anxiety than to pass safely across the intervening desert to the banks of the Buenaventura, where, in the softer climate of a more southern latitude, our horses might find grass to sustain them and ourselves be shelterd from the rigors of winter and from the inhospitable desert.5 Fremont's belief in the Buenaventura seems odd in the light of the earlier expeditions of Jedediah S. Smith, Peter Skene Ogden, and Joseph R. Walker who found no such river in these regions. Fremont either chose to ignore their reports or was ignorant of them. The expeditionary force continued south then turned back and made a spectacular mid-winter passage through the Sierras south of Lake Tahoe,| again leaving the Great Basin and descending into the Valley of Sacramento, Through the early months of 1844, Fremont trekked south down the San Joaquin Valley, but he yearned to try a direct route across the deserts to the east. Reports from the Indians, however, convinced him not to attempt crossing this sterile region, and he wisely followed their advice by proceeding south to the Mojave and employing the Spanish Trail to the Wasatch Mountains. On Pinto Creek, near the site of present Newcastle, Utah, the Fremont company intersected Joseph R. Walker and company on the trail. Although Walker was heading east, he guided Fremont to the shores of Utah Lake where they arrived in May. |
