Show 143 the dreaded Salt Desert of Donner fame About one o’clock In the morning we halted in the midst of the plain enticed by the sight of a broken ke the remains of a barrel and part of an old The mud was ankle deep and the only wagon-be- d we could spread down a blanket to sleep place upon which was around some scattering bushes of artemesia where the The scene' was wind had collected a little sand as barren dreary and desolate as could be ve 11 imaginox-yo- ed 6 Early the next morning they passed a looted cache evidently Two mules gave out during the day but robbed by Indians the party managed to reach the west side of Cedar Mountain is burnishing water for both man and beast The journey from that point to Salt They Lake City was completed without noteworthy incident by evening During the night snowed t party of white men that ever succeeded in making the entire circuit of the lake by land”7 Bonneville’s Walker expedition was the only one that claimed to have had this as its purpose and that claim arrived November 7 ’’being the first although Simpson calls it "a sixteen years attempted feat which Joseph 7alker he failed to execute”® previously but which Now that the lake had been circled by land the nature was not based on actual facts Stansbury Exploration and Survey of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake 114 6 7 8 Ibid 118 J H Simpson Exploration Across the Great Basin 23 |