| Description |
Exploring Great Salt Lake far more considerable body than at present. One rock separated from the rest somewhat resembles at a distance a turreted fortifi- cation. 75 Tuesday May 14. I spent part of the day in mending botching my shoes which threaten speedily to leave me altogether & wash- ing a few clothes. I ascended the heights & made a sketch.76 There were one or two new varieties of flowers near this spot Wednesday May IS. I left camp alone this morning upon my usual hunt after the picturesque I ascended the summit of a neigh- boring mountain called the Teton.77 There are some large although stunted cedar among which were Indian lodges of greater solidity than I have before seen. While reclining under the shade of a tree a loud buzzing started me to my feet, imagineing that it was some noxious reptile I looked around & beheld a beautiful little hum- ming bird Snow was still lying in patches upon the mountains some of which I brought into camp, that we might have one draught of water which if full of wriggletails & tasting villainously of the barrel, might at any rate possess the unusual qualification of 75 Camp No. 11 was called Turret Rock after the rocky eminence behind the camp. The boat grounded a mile or more from the shore which meant the usual laborious process of carrying supplies to the beach with the men suffering "incessant annoyance from the gnats which take full advantage of the hands being otherwise employed." Stansbury noted evidence of Indian occupation in the remains of sagebrush lodges, beds of sagebrush in small caves in the cliffs, and a hole dug by the Indians from which the survey party ob- tained some brackish water not usable for drinking purposes but good enough "for mixing bread, boiling potatoes & cooking generally." The captain thought that the Indian trail leading north probably led "to the more favoured region of the Pannack and the Port Neuf." Carrington, Journal, vol. 4, 13 May, p. 13; Stansbury, Report, pp. 180-82; Stans- bury, Journal, vol. 4,13 May. 76 The sketch has apparently been lost. To botch means to repair or patch in a bungling, clumsy inept manner. Stansbury worked all day with Carrington's crew in erecting two triangulation stations, one upon a peak west of Turret Rock which he called Sugarloaf and a second on a high and rocky cliff which he named Lighthouse. He wrote of their construction, "As no timber could be obtained within twenty miles, both of these stations were constructed wholly of stone, laid up in a conical form, upon the highest point of their respective peaks, and covered with white cotton." The men discovered some broken pieces of Indian pottery and some obsidian, probably gathered for the manu- facture of arrowheads. Stansbury, Xepovt, pp. 182-83; Stansbury, Journal, vol. 4, 14 May; Carrington, Journal, 14 May, p. 14. 77 Teton Peak was probably the mountain now known as Monument Peak in the Hansel Mountains, a range extending north from the lake. Gwynn, Great Salt Lake, p. 22. 158 |
