[William Clayton, four days before the pioneer camp arrives in Salt Lake valley]
...One of Brother [Robert] Crows men returned from Elder [Orson] Pratts company and reported that their camp is about 9 miles from here. He is hunting stray cattle. He says the road is very rough from here and about a mile beyond where they are camped the road begins to ascend over a high range of mountains. Elder Pratt has been to the top but cannot see the Salt Lake from there. Their company is gone on. I walked ahead of the camp near four miles and picked many gooseberries nearly ripe. They are very plentiful on this bottom. The brethren spent much time cutting brush wood and improving the road. The road over which we have traveled is through an uneven gap between high mountains and is exceeding rough and crooked. Not a place to be met with scarcely where there would be room to camp for the dense willow groves all along the bottom. We then proceeded on and travelled over the same kind of rough road till a little after 5 o'clock then encamped on a ridge having traveled today 7 1/4 miles ...We have passed through some small patches today where a few house logs might be cut, but this is truly a wild looking place . . .
[Source: George D. Smith, An Intimate Chronicle; The Journals of William Clayton, Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates, Salt Lake City, 1995, http://bit.ly/WilliamClayton]
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