a correct map of the interior of the wild lands of the continent.  From Thompson’s Fork Colonel Fremont’s division marched to the Cache la Poudre River, and thence to the plains of Laramie until they came to the North Fork of the Platte.  This river they crossed below the New Park and bent their way to the sweet water, reaching it at a point about fifteen miles below the Devil’s Gate.  From this point they traveled almost the same road which is now used by emigrants and which leads to Soda Springs on Beaver River.  It had been decided by Fremont to go to the Great Salt Lake and accomplish its exploration.  He therefore started for that direction; but, before doing so, ordered Kit Carson to proceed to Fort Hall and obtain such supplies as were required.  After procuring these necessities, Kit Carson, with one companion and his pack animals, set out on the return from Fort Hall and eventually found Fremont on the upper end of Salt Lake.  From here the party journeyed around to the east side of the lake, a distance of about twenty miles.  At this spot they obtained a good view of the lake and its adjacent scenery.  Before him, and in bold relief, stood out everything which the explorer desired to examine, even to one of the several islands which are located in the midst of this wonderful collection of saline waters.  To this isolated land Fremont was resolved to go.  Among the rest of the forethought, supplies, there was an India-rubber boat.  This was ordered to be made ready for a trip to the island early the following day.  No doubt our readers will be pleased to enjoy Colonel Fremont’s account of this lake, its scenery and characteristics.  We insert therefore as much thereof as our space will admit.  It was the twenty-first day of August 1843 that the little party reached Bear River, which, as has already appeared in another, part of this work, was the principal tributary of the Great Salt Lake.  At this point of Colonel Fremont’s narrative, he says:  “We were now entering a region which, for us, possessed a strange and extraordinary interest.  We were upon the waters of the famous lake which forms a salient point among the remarkable geographical features of the country, and around which the vague and superstitious accounts of the trappers had thrown a delightful obscurity, which we anticipated pleasure in dispelling, but which, in the meantime, left a crowded field for the exercise of our imagination.

“In our occasional conversations with the few old hunters who had visited the region, it had been a subject of frequent speculation; and the wonders which they related were not the less agreeable because they were highly exaggerated and impossible.