homeward with but two companions. This was the first crossing of the Sierra Nevada, and the traveller's narrative, though brief and meagre, must be presented in his own words. "On May 20, 1827," he writes, "with two men, seven horses, and two mules laden with hay and food, I started from the valley. In eight days we crossed Mount Joseph, losing on this passage two horses and one mule. At the summit of the mountain the snow was from four to eight feet deep, and so hard that the horses sank only a few inches. After a march of twenty days eastward from Mount Joseph, I reached the south-west corner of the Great Salt Lake. The country separating it from the mountains is arid and without game. Often we had no water for two days at a time; we saw but a plain without the slightest trace of vegetation. Farther on I found rocky hills with springs, then hordes of Indians, who seemed to us the most miserable beings imaginable. When we reached the Great Salt Lake we had left only one horse and one mule, so exhausted that they could hardly carry our slight luggage. We had been forced to eat the horses that had succumbed."[1] There are no means of knowing anything about his route; but I think he is as likely to have crossed the mountains near the present railroad line as elsewhere.[2]
Smith returned from Salt Lake to California with eight men, arriving probably in October 1827, but
- ↑ Smith, Excursion, 211-12. With the quotation given, the letter ends abruptly.
- ↑ Still it is not impossible or unlikely that in this trip or on the return Smith went through Walker Pass, as Warner and others say, or followed the Humboldt or Mary, as Sprague tells us; but the gold discovery on the way as related by Sprague merits no consideration, in the absence of other evidence and the presence of evident absurdities. It is to be noticed that Warner describes this crossing of the sierra by Smith and two men accurately enough, except in date; and I think it probable that he has reversed the order of the two entries to California, the first being by Mojave in 1826, and the second by Walker Pass in 1827. On Wilkes' map of 1841, reproduced in vol. iv. of this work, Smith's route is indicated, on what authority is not stated, by a line extending S. W. from Salt Lake, and approaching the sierra on the 39th parallel, with a lake on the line in long. 119°, and three streams running N. between the lake and mountains. A peak in the sierra just N. of 39° is called Mt Smith; and Mt Joseph is at the northern end of the range in lat. 41°. This may all rest on accurate reports.
