Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/175

Rh 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." 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.

Smith returned from Salt Lake to California with eight men, arriving probably in October 1827, but