Showing the Buenaventura River
They met with no great difficulties until they had gone as far south as Klamath Lake. "From this point," Frémont says, "our course was intended to be about southeast to a reported lake called Mary's, at some days' journey in the Great Basin, and thence, still on southeast to the reputed Buenaventura (good chance) River, which has had a place on so many maps, and countenanced the belief in the existence of a great river flowing from the Rocky Mountains to the Bay of San Francisco."
Figure 47 shows one of the maps to which Frémont refers. How interesting it is! Compare it with a good map in your geography and you will readily see that it is very misleading. The Sierra Nevada, one of the greatest mountain ranges in the United States, hardly appears, while traced directly across the map is the great Buenaventura River which Frémont expected to find and follow eastward toward its source near the Rocky Mountains.
If this river had really been where it was mapped, it is likely that Frémont would have had no trouble, for if hard pressed he could have followed the stream down to the ocean. But a wall of snow-covered mountains lying in the way made matters very different.
Winter was coming on when the party entered what is now northwestern Nevada, looking for the Buenaventura River. For several weeks they toiled on, often through the snow. Concerning this part of the journey Frémont says: "We had reached and run over the position where, according to the best maps in my possession, we should have found Mary's lake or river. We were evidently on the verge of the desert, and the country was so forbidding that we were afraid to enter it."
The party then turned south, still hoping that the river might be discovered. After a time they came upon a large lake and travelled for many miles along its eastern shore. One camp was made opposite a tall, pyramid-shaped island, the white surface of which made it conspicuous for a long distance. Frémont was much impressed by the resemblance of the island to the pyramids of Egypt and so named the body of water Pyramid Lake. At the southern end of the lake the travellers found a large stream flowing into it (now known as the Truckee River), and followed along its banks for some distance; but as the river turned toward the west, they left it and struck out across the country.
Frémont says again, "With every stream I now expected to see the great Buenaventura, and Carson (Kit Carson, the famous scout) hurried eagerly to search on every one we reached for beaver cuttings, which he always maintained we should find only on waters which ran to the Pacific."
FIG. 48.—PYRAMID ISLAND, PYRAMID LAKE, NEVADA
But all the streams flowed in the wrong direction, until at last the explorers grew weary of hunting for the river which had no existence. Although it was the middle of the winter, Frémont determined to cross the lofty Sierras which rose like a white wall to the west. Once over the mountains, he hoped to gain the American settlements in the Sacramento Valley, where already Sutter's Fort had been established.