Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/471

Rh Messrs. Chandless and Remy, who have well described it in their picturesque pages. I add a few notes, collected from men who have ridden over the ground for several years, concerning the stations: the information, however, it will be observed, is merely hearsay. The distance from Great Salt Lake City to San Bernardino is, according to my informant, about 750 miles, and has been accomplished in fourteen days. The road runs through Provo to Salt Cruz, formed by a desert of 50–60 miles, and making Sevier River the half-way point to the capital. At Corn Creek is an Indian farm, and Weaver is 64 miles from Fillmore. Cedar Spring is the entrance to Paravan Valley, where as early as 1806 there was a fort and a settlement. Then comes Fillmore, the territorial capital, and 96 miles afterward it passes through Paravan City in Little Salt Lake Valley. At Cold Creek it forks, the central road being that mostly preferred. The next station is Mountain Meadows, the Southern Rim of the Basin, celebrated for its massacre; ensues the Santa Clara River, and thence a total of 70 miles, divided into several stages, lead to the Rio Virgen. After following the latter for 20–30 miles, the path crosses the divide of Muddy River, and enters a desert 55–67 miles in breadth leading to Las Vegas. Thirty miles beyond that point lies a pretty water called "Mountain Springs," a preliminary to "Dry Lake," a second desert 40–45 miles broad, and ending at an alkaline water called Kingston Springs. The third desert, 40 miles broad, leads to a post established for the protection of emigrants, and called Bitter or Bidder's Springs, 115 miles from Las Vegas. The next stage of 35 is to the Indian River, a tributary of the Colorado, whence there is another military establishment: the land is now Californian. Thence following and crossing the course of the stream, the traveler sights the Sierra Nevada. After 50 miles down the Mohave Kanyon is San Bernardino, once a thriving Mormon settlement, 90 miles from San Pedro and 120 from San Diego, where water conveyance is found to San Francisco.

The central route is called Egan's by the Mormons, Simpson's by the Gentiles. Mr. or Major Howard Egan is a Saint and well-known guide, an indefatigable mountaineer, who for some time drove stock to California in the employ of Messrs. Livingston, and who afterward became mail-agent under Messrs. Chorpenning and Russell. On one occasion he made the distance in twelve days, and he claims to have explored the present post-office route between 1850 and the winter of 1857–1858. Captain J. H. Simpson, of the federal army, whose itinerary is given in Appendix I, followed between May and June, 1859. The traveled along Egan's path, with a few unimportant deviations, for 300 miles, and left it ten miles west of Ruby Valley, trending southward to the suite of the Carson River. On his return he pursued a more southerly line, and fell into Egan's route about thirty miles west of Camp Floyd. The employés of the route prefer Egan's line, declaring that on Simpson's there is little grass, that the springs are mere fiumaras of melted snow, and that the wells are waterless. Bad, however, is the best, as the following pages will, I think, prove.

To Tophet. 28th September.

On a cool and cloudy morning, which at 10 A.M. changed into a clear sunny day, we set out, after paying $3 for three feeds, to make the second station. Our road lay over the seven miles of plain that ended Rush Valley: we saw few rabbits, and the sole vegetation was stunted sage. Ensued a rough divide, stony and