OCR Text |
Show 12 THE SHORTEST ROUTE TO CALIFORNIA. Font and Garces; and so far as the journal of Esca-lante is disparaged by Greenhow, we are convinced his criticism is unjust; for not only is this journal writ-ten in a very plain, unpretending, direct way, but it abounds in excellent and apparently just observa-tions; and it is wonderful that the courses and dis-tances should plat so correctly, and should agree so well with our present maps. The next published account we find of any portion of the Great Basin country is in the memoir of Lieutenant now Brevet Major- General Gouverneur K. Warren, Major Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. In this memoir is a letter to General Warren from Kobert Campbell, Esq., a well- known gentleman of Saint Louis, who was long connected with the fur trade and its operations in the tramontane regions of the West.* In this letter Mr. Campbell gives ver-batim the statement of Mr. James Bridger, corrobo-rated by Mr. Samuel Tolleck, both Indian traders, to the effect that he, Bridger, was the first discoverer of Great Salt Lake, in the winters of 1821 and 1825. Mr. Bridger further states, in Mr. Campbell's letter, that " in the spring of 1826 four men went in' skin boats around it ( the Great Salt Lake), to discover if any streams containing beaver were to be found emptying into it, but returned with indifferent suc-cess." Washington Irving, in his " Bonneville's Ad-ventures," revised edition, page 186, says, " Captain Sublette, in one of his early expeditions across the * Lieutenant Warren's Memoir, vol. xi.; Pac. R. K. Reports, p. 35. |