Page:History of Utah.djvu/75

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honor of the president. After ten days' march, still in a south-westerly direction, through the country of the Pah Utes, he recrosses the same stream, and after two days comes to the junction of the Adams with what he calls the Seedskeeder, or Siskadee, river,6 a stream full of shallows and rapids and flowing through a sterile country. Then he reaches a fertile wooded valley which belongs to the Amajabes, or Mojaves, where the party rests fifteen days, meeting with the kindest treatment from the natives, who provide food and horses. Thence they are guided by two neo-phytes westward through a desert country, and reach the mission of San Gabriel in December, their appearance causing no small commotion in California. After many strange adventures, fully narrated in my History of California, Smith works his way north-ward up the San Joaquin Valley, and in May 1827 crosses the Sierra Nevada and returns eastward to Great Salt Lake. With Jedediah Smith, during some part of his stay in Utah, was Thomas L. Smith, whom we must immortalize in history as Pegleg Smith. He did not possess a very estimable character, as, I am sorry to say, few of his class did in those days. The leaders of American fur companies, however, were exceptions, and in points of intelligence, integrity, and daring were in no wise behind their British brethren.7


Green River Country

From south-east to north-west a portion of Utah was traversed in the autumn of 1830 by a trapping party under William Wolfskill. The company was fitted out in New Mexico, and the great valley of California was their objective point. Wolfskill had been a partner of Ewing Young, who was then in California. Leaving Taos in September they struck