INTRODUCTION TO REPORT AND JOURNAL. 10 



represented by Irving that on their return thev turned the Sierra Nevada at its south- 

 ern extremity. This being the ease, it is likely they took the Spanish trail route, which 

 Fremont, ten years after, in 1844, followed, and on which, at Vegas de Santa Clara, 



he was overtaken by this same Joseph Walker, in charge of a trading-party. 



from the report by Colonel Fremont of Ins expedition, in 1S4.V44, to Oregon and 

 California, through the South Pass, where, on the 6th September, of the former war, 

 he attained the summit of a butte near the month of Weber River, whence he saw. for 

 the first time, the waters of Great Salt Lake.' 



ity a few days to make some observations and take a hasty 'sketch of the lake. 



Subsequently, in continuation of his expedition, he explored in the following win- 

 ter from Fort Vancouver along the east base of the Sierra Nevada, or along what may 

 be called the northwestern edge of the Great Basin, as far as the vicinity of Johnson's 

 Pass, where he crossed the Sierra to the valley of the Sacramento. ( hi his return east 

 in the spring of 1844 he turned the Sierra Nevada at its southern extremity, got upon 

 the Spanish trail along the Mojave River in the Great Basin, crossed the Rio Virgin 

 and other tributaries of the Colorado, and, near Las Vegas de Santa Clara, again en- 

 tered the Great Basin, and explored it along its southern and eastern edge up to the 

 eastern portion of Lake Utah, where he left it and crossed the dividing ridge into the 

 valley of Green River. 



Colonel Fremont's report shows that in this expedition he had not seen, or did not 

 care to give heed to, the previously published history and map of the explorations of 

 Bonneville; for, had he done so, he would probably not have been led into the error 

 to which he attributed a great deal of his hardships, of constantly looking for the 

 hypothetical river of Buenaventura, which, as he supposed, taking its rise in the 

 Rocky Mountains, emptied itself into the bay of San Francisco, and upon which he 

 expected to winter. His language is as follows: 



"In our journey across the desert, Mary's Lake" [most probably the sink of the 

 Humboldt, formerly called Marv's River] "and the famous Buenaventura River were 

 two points on which I relied to recruit the animals and repose the party. Forming, 

 agreeably to the best map in my possession, a connected water-line from the Rocky 

 Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, I felt no other anxiety than to pass safely across the 

 intervening desert to the banks of the Buenaventura, where, in the softer climate of a 

 more southern latitude, our horses might find grass to sustain them and ourselves be 

 .dickered from the rigors of winter and from the inhospitable desert."' 1 



Touching this question, Colonel Bonneville, in a letter to Lieutenant Warren on 

 the subject of his explorations in and west of the Rocky Mountains, uses the following 

 laim-iuv'-e: and as it bears upon the fact as to whom should be accorded the credit of 

 the discovery of the Great Basin, I think proper to make an extract from it. I find 

 the letter in Lieutenant Warren's Memoir of Explorations, page 33: 



"Gila River, N. Mex., August 24, 1837. 



"Dear Sir: I thank yo u for your desire to do me justice as regards my m ap and 



