First Across the Sierra Nevada 



167 



There is, however, a curious bit of misrepresentation con- 

 nected with these events. Through Irving as a mouthpiece, 

 Bonneville is made to condemn the expedition to California in 

 the severest terms. While Walker is not actually condemned 

 by name, the heaviest censure in respect to disobedience and 

 incapacity is passed upon the expedition as a whole. The in- 

 justice of this attack will appear presently. First of all it 

 should be remembered that Bonneville was a man of marvel- 

 ous egotism and that probably he had private reasons for this 

 outbreak. 



That the Walker expedition had great consequences may 

 readily be appreciated. It first dared to take the risks and 

 face the dangers of the Great Basin deserts, it blazed a way to 

 California and opened up a path for the Fremont expeditions, 

 and for all those subsequent scientific and exploring expedi- 

 tions which followed closely on the heels of Fremont, includ- 

 ing the Pacific Railroad surveys. It is, indeed, just at the time 

 of the Pacific Railroad surveys that we get an understanding 

 ray of light on Bonneville's attack on the California expedition. 

 Bonneville writes a letter which is intended to illuminate Bonne- 

 ville, — and it does so, but not in the way that the writer of it 

 intended. The time had now come when the Fremont and 

 other expeditions to California had called attention to the im- 

 portance of the first expedition from the Great Salt Lake 

 across the deserts to California, and people were beginning to 

 make definite inquiries regarding it. The letter in question is 

 addressed to Lieutenant G. K. Warren, U. S. A., of the Pa- 

 cific Railroad surveys. In this letter^ the expedition to Cali- 



8 Letter to Lieutenant G. K. Warren, U. S. A., from Colonel Bonneville, dated 

 Gila River, New Mexico (Ariz.), August 24, 1857. It reads in part_ as follows: 

 "On the map you send I recognize my names of rivers, of Indian tribes, Mary's 

 or Marias River, running southwest, ending 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 clambered 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. ... 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 Buena- 

 ventura and all other California streams drained only the western slope." — 

 Warren's Memoir (Pac. R. Rep., Vol. XI, pp. 33-34, 1859). See. also, footnote 

 8. supra. Contrast the foregoing encomium of the California expedition with Bon- 

 neville's violent censure, twenty years previously, of "this most disgraceful expedi- 

 tion." (Irving. "The Rocky Mountains," Vol. I, p. 144. 1837.) 



