96 ELDORADO 



CHAPTER X. 



HISTORICAL INCIDENTS. 



I may be excused for departing from my own narra- 

 tive or personal experience, now and then, to give in- 

 teresting historical incidents from Fremont, Carson, or 

 other trappers and mountaineers whom I have met. 

 The following account will show the origin and what 

 led to the naming of "Pilot's Peak," and the first time 

 the route over which we have just passed, was traveled 

 by white men. October, 1844, found Fremont, Carson, 

 Maxwell and Walker, with others belonging to an ex- 

 ploring expedition, encamped on the shores of the great 

 Salt Lake, facing that unknown coutnry of which the 

 edge had scarcely been entered, and described by the 

 few Indians as being entirely without grass or water 

 to support any party that dare enter it. Still, to them, 

 it was not entirely an unknown country, as at one time 

 its eastern edge or shore was occasionally visited by 

 wandering tribes of Indians, but now only a single 

 family lived at that point to represent the vanished 

 aborigines. They were so abjectly poor that they 

 could not show one little well of pure water, but had to 

 quench their thirst from a brackish pool. 



Two days after the expedition left Salt Lake they 

 reached the summit of a low range of mountains. 



