As A Precaution, However, The Party Halted On Bear
River And Hunted For A Few Days, Until They Had Laid In A Supply
Of Dried Buffalo Meat And Venison; They Then Passed By The Head
Waters Of The Cassie River, And Soon Found Themselves Launched On
An Immense Sandy Desert.
Southwardly, on their left, they beheld
the Great Salt Lake, spread out like a sea, but they found no
stream running into it.
A desert extended around them, and
stretched to the southwest, as far as the eye could reach,
rivalling the deserts of Asia and Africa in sterility. There was
neither tree, nor herbage, nor spring, nor pool, nor running
stream, nothing but parched wastes of sand, where horse and rider
were in danger of perishing.
Their sufferings, at length, became so great that they abandoned
their intended course, and made towards a range of snowy
mountains, brightening in the north, where they hoped to find
water. After a time, they came upon a small stream leading
directly towards these mountains. Having quenched their burning
thirst, and refreshed themselves and their weary horses for a
time, they kept along this stream, which gradually increased in
size, being fed by numerous brooks. After approaching the
mountains, it took a sweep toward the southwest, and the
travellers still kept along it, trapping beaver as they went, on
the flesh of which they subsisted for the present, husbanding
their dried meat for future necessities.
The stream on which they had thus fallen is called by some, Mary
River, but is more generally known as Ogden's River, from Mr.
Peter Ogden, an enterprising and intrepid leader of the Hudson's
Bay Company, who first explored it.
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