PERSONAL ACCOUNT. 



17 



By reference fo the treaty it will be seen that any agreement of tlie kind required the action 

 of the joint commission, and that the joint commission vi-as to l>e composed, not only of the ttco 

 commissioners, but of tlie two surveyors also, 



I refused to recognise the act as that of the joint commission, and signed tlio map as tlu» 

 order directed^ carefully and studiously attaching a certificate that it was the initial point of 

 the two commissioners ; and to j^revent the possibility of misconstruction, an agreement in 

 writing was entered into with Mr. Salazar, and our signatures attested by witnesses, showing 

 that the map was only that of the boundary agreed upon by the two commissioners, and 



nothing else. 



speci 



government free to act, and repudiate the agreement by the two commissioners, as it subse- 

 quently did. 



It is evident that any other coursie would have resulted in committing the government, irre- 

 trievably, to an erroneous determination of our southern boundary. It is but just, however, 

 to Mr. Bartlett, to state, that so far as the facility for a route for a railway to the Pacific was 

 considered, the line agreed to by him was no worse than that claimed by liis adversaries. My 

 own reports, based upon previous explorations, had presented the whole case very clearly to 

 view. Yet these reports were overlooked, and it was ignorantly represented that while ^h\ 

 Bartlett's line lost the route for the railway, the other line secured it. I will not here fatigue 

 the reader by a topographical description of the country, showing where the obstacles to a rail- 

 way route exist ; but he will see by a glance at the map, that the practicable route so adjudged 

 by myself, and by other officers who retraced my steps and re-surveyed this country, is to the 

 south of both these lines of boundary claimed under the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 



Mr 



He 



o 



to have produced the first correct map of the Gila, 

 of an explorer of a new country, and only mentions 



previous explorers of that river to repudiate them. 



On page 192, volume H, Mr. Bartlett, in his personal narrative, says : ^^ It is also proper to 



state, that Lieutenant "Whipple and Mr. Gray found the bend of the river to be much greater 

 than is laid dow^n by Major Emory on his map." It would have been no more than truth 

 required, for Mr. Bartlett to have stated, what I expressly state in my printed memoir accom- 

 panying this map, that I did not explore this bend, but laid it down from conjecture. It is a 

 small aflfair, subtended by a chord of thirty or forty miles. I passed over the chord, and not the 

 bend, and so stated. 



The survey of that bend is given in the map of this report, and it will be seen it differs from 

 that laid down by Mr. Bartlett as the first correct map of the Gila. A comparison of his map 

 with that published by me in 184G will show that, with the exception of this bend, which he 

 has laid down erroneously, he has copied literally my map of 1846, even tho^e parts laid down 



conjecturally. 



The reconnoissance of the Gila made by me in 1846 was under adverse circumstances, made, 

 I may say, in the face of the enemy ; yet it has stood the test of re-survey, and Mr. Bartlett has 

 added to the injustice of attempting to depreciate my labors, the meanness of appropriating them; 



w 



On the same page, and in the same spirit, Mr. Bartlett says: ^^ Mr, Gray, in his official 

 letter to the Secretary of the Interior, from San Diego, says that many errors of others who 

 have been along this river, in astronomical observations, were corrected by Lieutenant Whipple." 



As I am the only person who ever made an astronomical observation on the Gila, previous to 



Vol. I 3 



y 



