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Show 196 first seen from Bennett Pass. At one o'clock the company camped on the edge of a "large wire grass meadow or slough full of strong a l k a l i water." This place was appropriately named Desert Swamp by the explorers. The meadow was watered by a considerable stream flowing from the north. Martineau recorded that i t was "about 20 feet wide and a foot deep, with a good current, " but Dame' s report of the stream had i t only 7 half as wide. The stream was strongly contaminated with alkali., however, and alkali beds were everywhere in the valley, which precluded any possibility of farming here. Typical of the Great Basin, this stream dissipated to nothing a few miles below the swamp forming the standing pools found earlier by the explorers. This stream was the White River. It flows and sinks intermittently over a distance of 125 miles through eastern Nevada. Rising out of the White Pine Range, i t is fed by numerous springs in the White River Valley and Pahranagat Valley in which v i c i n i t y i t may flow during certain seasons of the year for several miles. Barring a heavy storm, i t is almost always dry in the wash connecting these two valleys. The White River has been known to run dry for o ten years at a time and then flow for a year or two. Martineau found that above their camp the stream formed "large shallow ponds, which were much frequented by ducks."^ Dame wasted no time in organizing a reconnaissance of the White Mountains which were now only twenty miles west of them. Only one small divide, the Golden Gate Range, lay between him and range. After dinner the colonel and thirteen hand-picked men, including his trusted lieutenants, James H. Martineau and Nephi Johnson, struck out across the valley for the snowy peaks to the west. The reconnoitering party headed toward a gap in the Golden Gate Range. Near the summit they discovered a rock arch "large enough for a covered wagon to pass under, presenting a very natural resemblance to a sleeping lion or dog guarding |
