lb EXPLORATIONS ACROSS THE GREAT BASIN OF UTAH. 



Don Felix Martinez, governor and can tain-general of tins kingdom, for the purpose of 

 reducing and uniting Moquis— " (a couple of words here not decipherable). The manu- 

 script of Father Escalante's journal before referred to also shows that there was a well- 

 known road from Oraybe, via Zuiii, to Santa Fe, and which his party followed. These 

 facts show that at least as early as 1777, and most probably as early as 1773 (the 

 date according to Humboldt of Garces's journey to Oraybe), there was a communica- 

 tion all the way from Santa F^, and without doubt from Taos, via Moqui, to San 

 Gabriel; and, as Father Font's map shows, even all the way to Monterey and the bay 

 of San Francisco. 



The next published account of the earliest discoveries of any portion of the Great 

 Basin of Utah, which has aided me very much in my historical investigations, I find, 

 in the most excellent memoir of Lieut. Gouverneur K. Warren, Corps Topographical 

 Engineers, United States Army, exhibiting the data and authorities from which was 

 compiled the map of the United States territory between the Mississippi River and the 

 Pacific Ocean, intended to illustrate the reports upon the Pacific Railroad explorations. 

 In this memoir, which shows great labor and research, is a letter to Lieutenant Warren 

 from Mr. Robert Campbell, a well-known gentleman of Saint Louis, who has been 

 connected with the fur-trade in the tramontane region of the West. In this letter Mr. 

 Campbell gives verbatim the statement of Mr. James Bridger, 1 corroborated by Mr. 

 Samuel Tolleck, both Indian traders, to the effect that he (Bridger) was the first dis- 

 coverer of Great Salt Lake, in the winters of 1824 and 1825. k 



(i) Lieutenant Warren's Memoir, vol. xi, Pacific Railroad Reports, p. 35. 



(*) Mr. Bridger further states, in! Mr. Campbell's letter, that " in the Bpring of 1826 four men went in skin boats 

 around it to discover if any streams containing beaver were to be found omptying into it, but returned with indifferent 

 success." 7 Washington Irving, in his " Bonneville's Adventures," revised edition of 1849, page 186, says: "Captain Sublette, 

 in one of his early expeditions across the mountains, is said to have sent four men in a skin canoe to explore the lake, 

 who professed to have navigated all round it, but to have suffered excessively from thirst, the water of the lake being 

 extremely salt, and there being no fresh streams running into it." 



Captain Bonneville doubts this reporter that the men accomplished the circumnavigation, "because," he says, 

 " the lake receives several large streams from the mountains which bound it to the east." 



It would thus appear that Sublette, in all probability, was the person who sent out the four men referred to by 

 Bridger, in a skin canoe, to explore the lake ; and, though Bonneville doubts the report of the occurrence, yet the testi- 

 mony of Bridger is corroborative of it, and the circumstance of its being an actual fact that there are no streams coming 

 into the lake on its west shore, along its whole length, and Captain Stansbury, as he says, in his survey of the lake 

 in 1850 (see his report, page 103), " having frequently found it necessary to make a voyage of fifty miles to obtain a 

 supply even for a few days," certainly account for the thirst of Sublette's party. It may be true that Sublette's party 

 did not discover the fresh-water streams miming into the lake from the south and east which Bonneville speaks of ; but 

 this only shows that they did not explore I - t hat they did not explore it at all. In this connection, 



however, I think it proper to insert the following communication of a Mr. W. Marshall Anders 

 Intelligencer, which, it will be perceived, claims for both Messrs. Ashley and Provost the 

 Great Salt Lake to either Bridger or Bonneville : 



h went down to the bay by the steamer 

 Kite rifles of the real old 'Kaintuck' stripe. They were brought 

 -locked, and hard-stocked as thenis-dves. Being curious to learn 

 their history, and who it was that possessed rlieni. w, mad. . h u i, M i,i i< , and (he owner, b, in Mne! lowed b\ ihc, ni-,1 

 influences of tin . H is liamf . w -. lsSt .th (Jrant.a Scotchman by birtl" who 



came to America at an early age, in the year 1819, and joined the American Fur Company. In \->u he -iVroininiiied 

 Bridger— the founder of Fort Bridger— and his partner, Colonel Vasquez, to the iheu unknown wilds of the W.si f ir 

 beyond the headwaters of the Platte or Yellowstone. It was on one of these expeditions that 



the Frenchman, • covered the Great Salt Lake of Utah The immense 



extent of the lake, with its mountains and islands, so deceived Vas H u, , and Ins „ :1 rt v , hat t Ley reported to their fellows 

 that they had discovered an arm of the Pacific Ocean, and so, indeed, it seemed, for it was years before the error was 



