bottom, with its rush-bordered sinking spring, is called by Captain Simpson "Meadow Creek." We passed a pleasant day in revolver practice with Al. Huntington, the renowned brother of Lot, who had lately bolted to South California, in attempts at rabbit-shooting—the beasts became very wild in the evening—and in dining on an antelope which a youth had ridden down and pistoled. With the assistance of the station-master, Mr. Faust, a civil and communicative man, who added a knowledge of books and drugs to the local history, I compiled an account of the several lines of communication between Great Salt Lake City and California.
Three main roads connect the land of the Saints with the El Dorado of the West—the northern, the central, and the southern.
The northern road rounds the upper end of the Great Salt Lake, and falls into the valleys of the Humboldt and Carson Rivers. It was explored in 1845 by Colonel Frémont,[1] who, when passing over the seventy waterless miles of the western, a continuation of the eastern desert, lost ten mules and several horses. The "first overland trip" was followed in 1846 by a party of emigrants under a Mr. Hastings, who gave his name to the "cut-off" which has materially shortened the distance. The road has been carefully described in Kelly's California, in Horn's "Overland Guide," and by M. Remy. It is still, despite its length, preferred by travelers, on account of the abundance of grass and water: moreover, there are now but two short stretches of desert.
The southern road, viâ Fillmore and San Bernardino, to San Pedro, where the traveler can embark for San Francisco, is long and tedious; water is found at thirty-mile distances; there are three deserts; and bunch and other grasses are not plentiful. It has one great merit, namely, that of being rarely snowed up, except between the Rio Virgen and Great Salt Lake City: the best traveling is in Spring, when the melting snows from the eastern hills fill the rivulets. This route has been traveled over by
- ↑ Explored is used in a modified sense. Every foot of ground passed over by Colonel Frémont was perfectly well known to the old trappers and traders, as the interior of Africa to the Arab and Portuguese pombeiros. But this fact takes nothing away from the honors of the man who first surveyed and scientifically observed the country. Among those who preceded Colonel Frémont, the most remarkable, perhaps, was Sylvester Pattie, a Virginian, who, having lost his wife in his adopted home on the Missouri, resolved to trap upon and to trace out the head-waters of the Yellow River. The little company of five persons, among whom were Pattie and his son, set out on the 20th of June, 1824, and on the 22d of August arrived at the headwaters of the Platte, where they found General Pratt proceeding toward Santa Fé. Pattie, in command of 116 men, crossed the dividing ridge, descended into the valley of the Rio Grand del Norto, entered Santa Fé, and trapped on the Gila River. The party broke up on the 27th of November, 1826, when Pattie, accompanied by his son and six others, descended the Colorado, and, after incredible hardships, reached the Hispano-American missions, where they were received with the customary inhumanity. The father died in durance vile; the son, after being released and vaccinated at San Diego, reached San Francisco, whence he returned home viâ Vera Cruz and New Orleans, after an absence of six years. The whole tale is well told in "Harper's Magazine."
