Page:History of Utah.djvu/77

 was one under Joseph Walker, who with some thirty-six men, among them Joe Meek, went to trap on the streams falling into the Great Salt Lake.

Bonneville affirms that Walker's intention was to pass round the Great Salt Lake and explore its borders; but George Nidever who was of Walker's company, and at the rendezvous while preparations were made, says nothing of such purpose, and it was probably not thought of by Bonneville until afterward. Nidever had suffered severely from the cold during the previous winter, and had come to the Green River rendezvous that season for the express purpose of joining some party for California or of forming such a party himself, having been informed that the climate there was milder than in the mountains where he had been.10

If the intention was, as Bonneville asserts, that this party should pass round the great lake, in their endeavor they presently found themselves in the midst of desolation, between wide sandy wastes and broad brackish waters; and to quench their thirst they hastened westward where bright snowy mountains promised cooling streams. The Ogden River11 region being to them so new, and the thought of California so fascinating, they permitted themselves to stray from original intentions, and cross the Sierra Nevada to Monterey. All that is known of their doings before reaching the Snowy Range is given in my History of Nevada, and their exploits after reaching California are fully narrated in that part of this series devoted to the history of the latter country.12