| Description |
Journal April -June 1850 April II th After having resided at the house owned by Capt. Stansbury in the City of the G.S.L. during a week,' the period which intervened between the Surveying first start & this present day I received a summons to join them by Mr Carrington who was sent to the city by the Cap. to execute some commissions. About 7 a.m. therefore I started in the carriage, & before we had proceded f ar we were joined by Flinn who had been engaged as a hand & was accordingly proceding to the Camp. The day was warm & pleasant, & the genial air gave indication of approaching summer, the road for some distance west of the city, led through swampy bottoms, in which were a great number of cattle feeding upon the rank vegetation & two or three bare legged herd boys hunting up a yoke of oxen to commence their ploughing, or the cow which had been recruiting all winter. This swampy ground passed, we came to beds of sand & soft marl which are occasionally overflowed by the Lake, this was hard pull- ing for the mules & we all, including the mules, felt releived when we reached Terra Firma upon Antelope Island." I observed upon & l Stansbury described this house in less than complimentary terms, "Our quarters consisted of a small, unfurnished house of unburnt brick or adobe, unplastered, and roofed with boards loosely nailed on, which, every time it stormed, admitted so much water as called into requisition all the pans and buckets in the establishment to receive the numerous little streams which came trickling down from every crack and knot-hole." Stansbury, Report, pp. 122-23. 2 Carrington, John Hudson, and a hand, Isham Flinn, loaded the "black" wagon and the "blue" wagon and at 6:00 P.M. reached Camp No. 2 on Antelope Island, located on the eastern side north of the Mormon church herd camp. Antelope, also known earlier as Porpoise or Church Island, is the largest of the islands in the Great Salt Lake, being 15% miles long by !% miles wide, with an area of 23,175 acres. The eastern shore slopes gently toward the water while the western side rises sharply. Its use as a grazing area for cattle, sheep, and horses started in 1848, and this activity was one of the reasons for the dis- appearance of antelope from the island by the 1870s. As in the time of the Stansbury survey, low water transforms the area into a peninsula which can be reached by wheeled vehicles. Carrington, Journal, 11 April, p. 2; Morgan, Great Salt Lake, p. 25. 127 |
