20 EXPLOEATIONS ACKOSS THE GREAT BASIN OP UTAH. 



explorations in the Rocky Mountains. I started for the mountains in July, 1832. * 

 * * I left the mountains in July, 1836, and readied Fort Leavenworth, Mo., 

 the 6th of August following. During all this time I kept good account of the courses 

 and distances, with occasional observations with my quadrant and Dolland's reflecting 

 telescope. * * * I plotted my work, found it proved, and made it into 

 three parts: one a map of the waters running east to the Missouri State line; a second 

 of the mountain region itself; and a third, which appears to be the one you have sent 

 me, of the waters running west. On the maps you send I recognize my names of 

 rivers, of Indian tribes, observations, Mary's or Maria's River, running southwest, end- 

 ing in a long chain of flat lakes, never before on any map, and the record of the battle 

 between my party and the Indians, when twenty-five were killed. This party clam- 

 bered over the California range, were lost in it for twenty days, and entered the open 

 locality to the west, not far from Monterey, where they Wintered. In the spring they 

 went south from Monterey, and turned the southern point of the California range, to 

 enter the Great Western Basin. On all the maps of those days the Great Salt Lake 

 had two great outlets to the Pacific Ocean; one of these was the Buenaventura River, 

 which was supposed to head there;* the name of the other I do not recollect. It 

 was from my explorations and those of my party alone that it was ascertained that this 

 lake had no outlet; that the California range basined all the waters of its eastern slope 

 without further outlet; that the Buenaventura and all other California streams drained 

 only the western slope. It was for this reason that Mr. W. Irving named the Salt Lake 

 after me; and he believed I was fairly entitled to it. * * * * * 



"Yours, &c, 



"B. L. E. Bonneville, 



"Colonel Third Infantry. 

 "Lieut. G. K. Warren, 



" Topographical Engineers? 1 



It would appear from Colonel Fremont's report that it was a favorite purpose of 

 his, on his return from California, to cross the Great Basin dirrctly, instead of turning it 

 at its southern extremity. He is speaking of what occurred as lie was turning the 

 southern end of the Sierra Nevada, by the Tah-e-chay-pah Bass, to get on the Spanish 

 trail. "In the evening a Christian Indian rode into the camp, well dressed, with long 

 spurs and a sombrero, and speaking Spanish fluently. It was an unexpected appari- 

 tion and a strange and pleasant sight in the desolate gorge of a mountain — an Indian 



(r) Colonel Bonneville is here probably in error. On Finley's map of North America (Philadelphia, 1826), given 

 by Lieutenant Warren in his Memoir, p. 30, and which purports to include all "the recent geographical discoveries" up 

 to the date stated, the^Buenaventura is represented not as one of the outlets of Great Salt Lake into the Pacific but as 

 the outlet of Lake Salado, doubtless the Lake Sevier of our present maps. The two rivers which are represented'on this 

 map as disemboguing from the Great Salt Lake into the Pacific are the Rio Los Mon^os and Rio Timpanogos The fact 

 of Father Escalante in 177.', giving th, nam. of Buenaventura to a river (evidently from the plotting of his notes, Green 

 River) which on Humboldt's map is represented as flowing westwardly into Lake Salado (Sevier) from the Rocky 

 Mountains, the western limits of which he has left undetermined, points, I think, to the origin of the Rio Buenaventura 

 and of its subsequent hypothetical extension from Lake Sevier to the Bay of San Francisco. It is due, however, to the 

 accuracy of Escalante to say that he express manner the Indians spoke of the Sevier 



River, which he followed and which he calls the Santa Ysabel, he was led to the idea that it and the Buenaventura were 

 the same stream; though he could not really think so, for the reason that there was not enough water in the Sevier. 

 the Santa Ysabel, after emptying into a lake, flows out of it westwardly, and this may have 

 * that it continued to the Pacific. 



