Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-05-26
LOVE IN THE DESERT.

LOVE IN THE DESERT.
In 1923 Salt Lake was discovered by the
employees of the st. Louis Fur Company,
and rude fort erected there. In the sum-
mer of 1925 company of about forty men
and Indians, under the command Of Cap
tain Jerrediah S. Smith, started from that
point westward, to explore a new trail
through the unknown desert to California.
He had an Indian wife named Mary, who
seems to have known something of a por.
tion of the proposed route, by hearsay or
otherwise. She with other Indians guided
Smiths company to the head-waters of this
stream, and Smith, affectionately or CRATE
fully, gave it her name. 1t continued to
be known as such until 1916, when Colonel
Fremont came down the same trail, and
with questionable fastidiousness exchanged
the name of the humble Indian woman for
the more aristocratic title it now bears.
For some years, however, it continued to
wear its old name, and as Marys
river was known to the early Cali.
fornia immigrants. Captain Smith
is said to have been the first man who lead
a company to California by this route.
nomenclature on the charts of the main
river, but the old name still is preserved
for the head of the river, above point
near the present railroad station Of Deeth,
in Elko county. The river is evidently
the remains of an ancient lake once occu-
pying this basin, corresponding to Bear
river and Salt Lake now. Ruby and Clover
lakes here yet indicate the extent of this
vast inland fresh water sea, which at some
remote period broke down the rocky wall
at Palisades and lost itself on the lower
levels of the "Sink." What is yet known
as Mary's river heads in the rugged vol
canic mesas and canyons of the Owyhee and
Goose Creek mountains, along the line of
THE FORTY. SECOND PARALLEL OF LATITUDE.
This is historical ground. Over sixty
years ago here boundary line was estab-
lished that fixed the northern limits Of the
Spanish empire on this continent. Here is
the great water. shed sending it's streams
north and south. This dividing ridge
meanders through the mountains westward
to the Klamath lake region, and breaks
out again in the Siskiyou and Klamath
mountains of California. The establish
ment of this boundary settled an old and
angry dispute involving five tirst-class
powers. Spain claimed the country inde-
finitely northward as portion Of the Mex
ican province; England claimed every
thing southwark to the Spanish territory;
Russia interposed interests France
had previously held indefinite claims
which had been transferred to the
United States by the Louisiana
purchase in 1904. When Jefferson bought
these claims he purchased ga pig in
poke" He bought country and then
had to find it. He found it by
Lewis and Clark's expedition in 1905,
treaty of 1919, by which the Spanish
Viceroy's authority was limited to the
country south of the forty-second parallel
manded to the forty ninth, under Folks
of conflicting nationalities were mainly
settled by this treaty OF 1919. A boundary
was then established that endures to this
and purchases of later times have not
annihilated it, separating American States
and Territoritslthen undreamed of. This
is the boundary line Of California, Nevada,
Utah, Oregon and Idaho. A half dozen
old. gray-haired statesmen, sitting around
a green table in Europe, traced with their
fingers on the old charts this natural
divide, and one day after dinner peaceably
settled the whole question of territorial
rights on the Pacific slope. That days
work left the United States in possession
OF the field.
THE OLD MoUNTAINEERs,
However, paid little regard to maps or in
ternational treaties. The boundary line
was imaginative. No surveyor stretched
q chain across that unknown wilderness for
many years afterwards. Ths only monu.