sionaries. About thirty-one of us adhered to our original intention and declined to give up our expedition.”
While the party were slowly descending Bear River four of them rode over to Fort Hall to obtain if possible a “pilot to conduct us to the gap in the California Mountains, or at least to the head of Mary's River,” and to make inquiries of Mr Grant, then in charge. No guide could be found, and Grant was not able greatly to enlighten them. The fur-trader could have told them much concerning the route to Oregon, but this way to California as an emigrant road had hardly yet been thought of.
“As we approached Salt Lake,” writes Bidwell,[1] “we were misled quite often by the mirage. The country too was obscured by smoke. The water in Bear River became too salt for use. The sage brush on the small hillocks of the almost level plain became so magnified as to look like trees. Hoping to find water, and supposing these imaginary trees to be growing on some stream, and knowing nothing about the distance to Salt Lake, we kept pushing ahead mile after mile. Our animals almost perished for want of water while we were travelling over this salt plain, which grew softer and softer till our wagons cut into the ground five or six inches, and it became impossible to haul them. We still thought we saw timber but a short distance ahead, when the fact really was there was no timber, and we were driving straight for the Great Salt Lake.”
The truth is they had wandered from their course; they had passed Cache Valley where they intended to rest and hunt; they were frequently obliged to leave
- ↑ California, 1841–8, MS., 33–4. The author, then little more than boy, being but 21, has a long story to tell about straying from camp one day in company with a comrade, James John, bent on a visit to the adjacent heights for a handful of snow; and how they slept in the mountains in a bear's nest, and reached next day their company, some of whom had spent the night in search. They had been given up as slain by the Blackfeet; and there were those so ungracious as to say that it would have served them right had it been so.
