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Pioneering in Sanpete Valley from a shore which often happens by reason of the wind it leaves a considerable deposit all over, which may be shoveled up & used the lake is like a huge pickle tub & we used it for this purpose dip- ping our beef a few times in the water it was sufficiently cured. It would be delightful water to bathe in owing to its buoyancy but its excessive saltiness aggravates a little sore into one rather serious. The design of the Govern- in promoting the survey which will cost about $~O,OOO was to ascertain whether this lake & the Utah connected as they are by a river, Jordan, was not navigable for boats to convey stores to the Pacific Coast,' in this they are dis- appointed as it is of no practical use, save to supply this com- munity with salt, the Lake is generally shallow the deepest water we found being 40 feet while we had an immense deal of hard labour, in dragging the boats over sand bars & wading with camp equipage to shore. I do not Know the exact statistics of the lake as the book will be made up at Washington but it is about 500 miles in circumference, & 80 in length. We met on the Western side of the Lake but one Indian Squaw and pappoose, they were the most miserable human beings I ever saw belonging to the tribe of dig- gers, living on roots, crickets & other disgusting insects Fremont describes the life of this tribe "to be one continuous effort to sup- port life," however this may be, no part of it can be spent in the performance of ablutions, as you cannot conceive any object more repulsively dirty than these creatures.2 You will think however I l The myth that Utah (Timpanogos) Lake and Great Salt Lake were somehow con- nected to a river called the Buenaventura, which flowed into San Francisco Bay, engaged the fancy of map makers from Baron Alexander Von Humboldt's map of 1808 down to the time that Captain Howard Stansbury led his corps of engineers and trappers to the Great Basin in 1849. Although the mountain men, the early Mormon pioneers, and others knew better, especially after John C. Fremont explored the whole perimeter of the Great Basin in 1843-44, the myth persisted. John Hudson merely recorded what was common campfire J talk of the time while Stansbury understood that he was to make a proper survey of Great Salt Lake "so that its capacity for navigation and transportation of supplies may be known." Although an attempt was made in the 1870s to establish a steamboat route on the lake to transport ores from the south shore to the Central Pacific Railroad on the north, the enterprise was a failure, the single boat constructed being used mostly to carry tourists on sight-seeing tours. Morgan, Great Salt Lake, pp. 60-64, 225; Brigham D. Madsen, Corinne: The Gentile Capital of Utah (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society, 1980), pp., 155-65. 2 In the journal describing his work on the Stansbury SU rvey of Great Salt Lake, Hudson men tions meeting two different groups of Indians. On the northern shore of the 94 |
