INTRODUCTION ! 



Basin system as oik 

 in many instances i 

 divide between (list 

 The next antlu 

 the Great Basin, is t 

 eal Engineers, of h 

 Utah in 1849/ pub 



correctly and have been of so much service to me. To him and his assistau 

 lamented Captain Gunnison, Topographical Engineers, the public is indebted 

 thorough triangular survey of the Greal Salt Lake; and to them is the credit d 

 a complete exploration of the lake, around its entire limits, a feat which J< 

 Walker,byColonel Bonneville's directions, attempted, as before stated, sixteen year 



want of' fresh water, he failed to execute. Stansbury, however, extended his ex] 

 tions into the Great Basin only as far as Pilot Knob, a prominent landmark sixt\ 

 miles in a due west direction from Great Salt Lake. 



The next authentic account of explorations in the Great Basin is that by Ca 

 G. Beckwith, Third Artillery, the assistant of Captain Gunnison in his expediti. 

 the survey of a railroad-route near the 41st parallel, and who took charge of the 

 dition after the massacre of Gunnison and a portion of his party by Indians, on J- 

 River, on the 26th October, 1853. The party entered the Great Basil 



of Green River by tin 



ek he calls Salt Greek, a hraneli of the 



Sevier; and thence they returned to the usually-traveled route from Los Angeles, 

 and proceeded, by the way of Nephi, Payson, Provo, &c, to Great Salt Lake City. 



In the ensuing year, 1*54, Captain Beckwith explored some of the tributaries ot 

 Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake, issuing from the Wahsateh and Uinta Mountains, 

 and, passing by the southern end of Great Salt Lake, he struck generally a north-of- 



editor of National Intelligencer, dated Jane V.i, i-M. constituting M.-,. 1 ><><•. 11.-,,-., ,,| Ke|.s. N". -, -'-<l C<m._:.. vM >.•>-., 

 that he passed right along where he has located this exfc osiv< rang- tod y I i says J 



report. On the contrary, his language in reference to this portion ot his route :-: ' W - t..un.l the .-..mitry a nigb table- 

 land, bristling with mountains, often in short, isolated hlocks, and sometimes ac rabk ranges with 



onThe°maps of Utah by Colton, Monk, and Mitchell, is a fiction, and shonld be discontinued. 



(c) Messrs. Beale and Heap passed over nearly this same route in W.:;.:.i ,hU,,„. „f Captain Gunnison's party 

 and after reaching Vegas de Santa Clara, took the Spanish trail route to California. (See Heap s Journal, published by 

 Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854.) This journal gives a statement of Rev. J. W. Brier, in which he represents that he 

 and a small party found their way, in the fall of 1849, from Vegas de Santa Clara, in a tortuous and, in general, a south- 

 westwardly course, across the southwest corner of the Great Basin to Walker's Pass. 



Colonel Fremont, also, subsequently, during th ,ute of Captain 



Gunnison to Grand River, and thence to Parowan and Cedar City on the Spanish trail. Thence his course -s directly 

 west over the Great Basin to the Sierra Nevada, which, on account of snow, he was obliged to cross over by \\ alker s 

 Pass,' some sixty to eightv miles to the southward. (See Fremont's letter to editor National Intelligencer, of June 13, 

 1854,' constituting House Mis. Doc. No. 8, 2d Sess. 33d Cong.) 



