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Show 24 THE SHORTEST ROUTE TO CALIFORNIA. Pilot's Peak to Whitton's Spring; and thence bis party was divided, Mr. E. M. Kern, with Joseph Walker as guide, striking northwestwardly for the Humboldt ( Mary's) River, following it down to its sink,* and striking southwardly to and passing along the east shore of Carson Lake, to Walker's River; and Colonel Fremont, with Carson and Godey as guides, and a portion of the party, striking south-westwardly more directly across the Great Basin to Walker's Lake, where the parties again met. Here separating again, Mr. Kern, guided by Walker, pro-ceeded southwardly to the head of, and along, Owen's River and lake, and thence to Walker's Pass of the Sierra Nevada, where he left the Basin and crossed the Sierra into the' valley of Lake Tulare and the Rio San Joaquin. Fremont, on the contrary, traveled northwardly to Carson River, where he crossed it at the same point as in his preceding exploration; and thence to Salmon Trout Creek, up which he traveled, and crossed the Sierra Nevada in latitude 39 17' 12" N., or 38- 2 miles north of his pass of 1841. Lieutenant Warren, in his Memoir,^ has erroneously reversed the respective positions of Fremont and Kern in their explorations after separating at Whitton's * It is generally understood that Fremont was the first to establish the wagon route along the Humboldt. This is a mis-take. The route Kern's party took down the Humboldt was already a well- beaten wagon route, which had been used by Hastings and other California emigrants for several years previously to the explorations of Fremont. t Page 50. |