JOURNAL OF JOHN WORK'S SNAKE COUNTRY EXPEDITION OF 1830-31
SECOND HALF
Editorial Notes by T. C. Elliott
This Quarterly printed in Vol. XIII., No. 4 the first installment of the journal of John Work, a trader of the Hudson's Bay Company, covering his trapping expedition to the Snake Country in the year 1830-31, with an editor's introduction; the second and final installment is now presented. The original of the first part of this journal was found in London but curiously enough this latter half comes from quite another source, namely from the family papers of the late William Fraser Tolmie of Victoria, B. C.; Dr. Tolmie married one of the daughters of John Work. No opportunity has been afforded for the writer of these notes to compare his copy with the original but some few apparent errors, chiefly in proper names, cannot affect its general reliability.
We left Mr. Work with his large party of trappers and their families on the 18th of March, 1831, at the Portneuf river in Southern Idaho, probably not far east of the present city of Pocatello; we now resume our acquaintance with him April 21st, a month later, on the upper waters of the Bannock river, south of the Portneuf. After very successful trapping here he follows down Snake river past American Falls to Raft river (Mr. Work designates this stream both as Raft and as Roche-Rock-river, but evidently it was the former), and ascending that river to one of its sources he crosses the divide to the plain at the north end of Great Salt Lake. He was then not far from Kelton, Utah, a place which held prominence for a time after the completion of the Central Pacific Railway as the eastern terminus of the stage lines from Walla Walla, which was one of the regular lines of travel for people going East from Oregon and Washington. This stage line crosses the Snake river below Salmon Falls.
Mr. Work then proceeds westward across the divide to the waters of the Humboldt river (called by him Ogden's river)
