An expedition to the valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah : including a description of its geography, natural history, and minerals, and an analysis of its waters : with an authentic account of the Mormon Settlement : also, a reconnoissance of a new route through the Rocky Mountains.

  • Stansbury, Howard.
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An expedition to the valley of the Great Salt Lake of Utah : including a description of its geography, natural history, and minerals, and an analysis of its waters : with an authentic account of the Mormon Settlement : also, a reconnoissance of a new route through the Rocky Mountains. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of the post for outfits and transportation furnished to several heavy trains for Oregon, New Mexico, and California, as well as by a panic occasioned by exaggerated reports of the existence of the cholera at the post; which caused the desertion of forty teamsters and mechanics in one night. Not a hand was to be hired, nor could the quartermaster furnish me with a single team- ster. I was consequently obliged to send an express to Kansas for the necessary additional force. Before leaving Fort Leavenworth, we were joined by a small party of emigrants for California, who desired to travel in our company for the sake of protection, and who continued with us as far as Salt Lake City. This proved a fortunate arrangement, since we thereby secured the society of an excellent and intelli- gent lady, who not only, by her cheerfulness and vivacity, beguiled the tedium of many a monotonous and wearisome houi, but, by her fortitude and patient endurance of exposure and fatigue, set an example worthy the imitation of many of the ruder sex. The cholera had for a considerable time been raging on the Mis- souri ; and as we passed up, fearful rumours of its prevalence and fatality among the emigrants on the route daily reached us from the plains. On the day we left Fort Leavenworth, one member of our little party was carried to the hospital in a state ot col- lapse, where he died in twenty-four hours. The only officer attached to my command had been ill for several weeks, with severe attacks of intermittent fever, which now merged into chronic dysentery, and he was, in consequence, unable to sit . on his horse, or to do duty of any kind. These were rather discouraging cir- cumstances for an outset; but, at length, on the 31st day of May, our preparations being completed, we commenced our journey, my own party consisting in all of eighteen men, five wagons, am forty-six horses and mules; while that of Mr. Sackett, our fellow- traveller, contained six persons, one wagon, one travelling carriage, and fifteen animals. Lieutenant Gunnison, being too ill to travel in any other manner, was carried on his bed, in a large spring wagon, which had been procured for the transportation of the instruments. The weather, in the morning, had been dark and lowering, with occasional showers, but it cleared off about noon; the camp broke up; the wagons were packed, and we preparec to exchange, for a season, the comforts and refinements of civilized life for the somewhat wild and roving habits of the hunter an the* savage. My party consisted principally of experienced voy-