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April-June 1850 ten years older. We found Capt Stansbury on Dolphin Island, still resting from the fatigue of a long row from Antelope Is. So soon as breakfast could be prepared, we fell to & again revelled in roast beef & coffee. The Capt brought with him Auchambeaux? as guide an experienced mountaineer who had accompanied Fremont in one or two of his adventurous expeditions together with two other Frenchmen. 92 A Station was built upon the highest point of the Island. It was exceedingly warm & we tried in vain to escape the stings of the midges who swarmed about us in myriads & until the cool of the Eveng drove them to their retreats. I spent the day in examineing the Island made so only by very shallow water & which I presume would in the fall communicate with the mainland. I made a sketch of the Conglomerate rocks immediately under which the camp was situated.`" Wednesday May 29. Before breakfast we dragged the yaul as far in land as possible & then turned her bottom upwards that she might be caulked & repaired in the former operation the bitumen found near Horn frog station was usefully applied. 92 As Stansbury explained under his heading of May 20, he had sent Auguste Archambeault and a party to the Uinta Mountains the preceding November "on a trading expedition, and they had brought with them nineteen fine horses." Archambeault had served in Charles C. Fremont's 1843-44 expedition. During the 1845 journey under Fremont, with two other companions and Kit Carson as leader, Archambeault had per- formed the yeoman service of reconnoitering the salt desert west of Great Salt Lake. After the difficult crossing and the location of some springs at the base of Pilot Peak, Archam- beault returned with the welcome news to Fremont's camp near Skull Valley. He then led the main expedition across the salt flats. If a knowledge of thirst and heat on a saline desert was of value, the French Canadian was certainly in a position to offer advice to the Stans- bury party. The other two Frenchmen were no doubt Francois Perrault, who had served under Fremont in the 1843-44 expedition, and Antoine Tesson, who was listed early in Stans- bury's Journal as having been paid $33.50 in wages. Lieutenant Gunnison had had trouble with Tesson and recorded on November 15, 1849, "Discharge[d] Antoine Tesson for out- rageous insolence, given before all the party-He refuses to sign the Pay Roll & says that he will stay, until the `old man comes' --& several times said that Capt. S. will make it all right-" Gunnison informed his diary that if his authority was "not upheld in the case" he would have little authority over the new men "hired W. of the Missouri." Stansbury, Report, p. 188; Spence and Jackson, Expeditions of John Charles Fremont, vol. 1, p. 706; vol. 2, pp. 20-21; Stansbury, Journal, vol. 1, 4 June-5 July; Gunnison, Journal, vol. 2, 15 November-29 April. 93 This sketch apparently has not survived. 167 |
