Wednesday, 23d, we travelled twenty miles without water, over hills and plains, and among forests of cedar, and encamped after dark at a spring, having regained the old road a few miles before encamping.
While the cattle were feeding I ascended an eminence, and, with my telescope, viewed the largest valley I had ever seen in the great basin. It might have been seventy miles from south to north, and thirty miles from east to west.
Some signs of water and rich and fertile spots appeared in the dim distance; but, generally speaking, it was a cheerless monotony, without water, and clothed in the leaden hue of the desert.
We travelled several miles over a fine table land, on east of said valley, which still stretched away some thirty miles to the west, and was finally bounded by a low range of mountains on its south and west, and these again were backed by a still higher range and white with snow. Their lofty peaks, at fifty or sixty miles distance, peeping up from behind the nearer hills like distant clouds on the far off horizon.
After passing a few miles of very hilly road we came down upon a small stream, which heads in numerous spring meadows near the rim of the basin, on the divide between it and the Colorado. Here we camped to rest on Saturday and Sunday.
This little mountain paradise was, by the present road, three hundred and eleven miles from the Great Salt Lake City, and was altogether the most beautiful place in all the route. Some thousand or fifteen hundred acres of bottom, or meadow lands, were spread out before us like a green carpet richly clothed with a variety of grasses, and possessing a soil both black, rich and quick—being a mixture of sand, gravel and clayey loam, and the decayed visitations of ages. It was everywhere moistened with springs, and would produce potatoes, vegetables and the smaller grains in abundance without watering.
The surrounding hills were not abrupt, but rounded off, presenting a variety of beauteous landscapes, and everywhere richly clothed with the choicest kind of bunch grass, and bordered in their higher eminences with cedar and nut pine sufficient for fuel.
Afar off, behind the hills in the east, could be seen from the eminence high, snowy mountains, black in places with tall timber, plainly distinguishable with the telescope, probably from ten to twenty miles distance.
May 13th—We encamped at a large spring, usually called the Vegas—having travelled nearly two hundred miles since the foregoing was written. The country through which we have passed is a worthless desert, consisting of mountains of naked rock and barren plains, with the exception of here and there a small stream, with feed sufficient for our cattle.
The longest distance without water is about fifty miles, which we passed on Saturday and Sunday last, and arrived here safe and without much suffering. We have as yet lost no cattle through hunger, thirst, or fatigue. Two cows were stolen from us by the Indians on the Rio Virgin.