History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

WALKER'S EXPEDITION. 25
tions 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 River 11
region being to them so new, and the thought of Cali-
fornia 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
10 Such being the case he would hardly have joined Walker's expedition
had it been understood that the exploration of Salt Lake was intended. See
Nidever's Life and Adv., MS., 58.
11 Previously called the Mary River, and now the Humboldt. See Hist.
Nevada; Hist. Northwest Coast; and Hist. Gal., this series.
12 See Nidever 's Life and Adv., MS.; Warner's Mem., in Pac. R. Report,
xi. pt. i. 31-4. In giving his dictation to Irving, Bonneville professed great
interest in the exploration of Great Salt Lake though he had done nothing to
speak of in that direction. Irving, however, humored the captain, whose
vanity prompted him to give his own name to the lake, although he had not
a shadow of title to that distinction.