118 THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



terey on the Pacific coast. The friar volunteered to be an explorer 

 and early in the summer set off at the head of a party. Instead of go- 

 ing west he went north, an error which prevented his reaching Monte- 

 rey, but which brought him, early in September, to the shores of Utah 

 Lake. He found its shores inhabited by the Yuta Indians, who told 

 him of the warlike Comanches to the north and of the salt lake. 



"The other lake with which this communicates," he wrote in his 

 diary, "occupies, as they tell us, many leagues, and its waters are in- 

 jurious and extremely salt. He who wets any part of his body with 

 this water immediately feels an itching on the wet part." 



Escalante did not go on to make proof of hearsay, but turned to 

 the southward and made an effort to scale the Sierras. He failed and 

 areturned to Santa F6. Apparently his discoveries at the north 

 roused no curiosity. He did not go back and no other Spaniard fol- 

 lowed in his earlier footsteps. 



Nearly fifty years passed before a white man stood upon the shore 

 and tasted the water to prove that the Indian legend was true. The 

 man was James Bridger, an American trapper and hunter, whose par- 

 ty had been encamped for the winter of 1824-25 at Bear Lake. Brid- 

 ger had heard the Indians tell of the "bitter water" and perhaps had 

 paid some attention to them. His discovery was the result of a wager 

 that he could follow Bear River to the body into which it emptied. 

 He hardly would have made the bet had he believed his journey would 

 be a long one. He left his friends and went down the river in com- 

 pany with Indian guides. When at length he returned he told his 

 white companions he had discovered a branch of the ocean. He held 

 to his conviction until the following year, when he and three other 

 members of the party circumnavigated the lake in skin boats, finding 

 that it had no outlet. 



Skeen Ogden, another hunter, whose name remains as that of the 

 important railroad junction point north of Salt Lake City, led a party 

 of Hudson Bay company trappers to the shore of the lake in that same 

 year, and after that it was frequently visited by the members of this 

 hardy, wandering class. 



It was not until 1832 that Captain Bonneville, a second La Hontan, 

 came upon the lake. He was so anxious to magnify himself that he 

 was not content with giving his own name to the actual laKe but be- 

 stowed it also upon the prehistoric sea, which he was the first to see 

 must have existed. Washington Irving paid the adventurer the unde- 

 served tribute of keeping the title, Lake Bonneville. 



General John C. Fremont, the "Pathfinder", showed as much van- 

 ity as Bonneville. He spent several months in the Salt Lake Basin in 

 1843, navigating the lake in a rubber boat. In his published work he 

 afterwards claimed his boat was the first to cut the heavy waters. He 

 landed during his first trip on one of the numerous small islands in 

 the lake, evidently expecting to be rewarded for his stiff climb to the 



