Transcript

After our guide left us we missed the Walker Pass & turned down the Toolary [Tulare] valley to Sutters Fort on the Sacremento [Sacramento] River where the City now stands

We reached there on the 26—Augt. 1847[,] 600 miles from Los Angeles, without accident. We found a few families of Saints that came on the Ship Brookland [Brooklyn] from New York expecting to meet the church in Cal[ifornia] untill we told them they were settling in Salt Lake Valley. The Burr family was there. We rested a few days & then took the old Calaforna [California] Road—crossed the American Fork and found a Daughter of widow Murphy, one of the ilfated [ill fated] Hasting party.

Bro. John King & I visited her to find her married to one Johnston distressed in mind because of her lot—away from the church & Henry Pike Hoyt was taken so sick I stoped with him a couple of days—the Company going on to Bear Valley; 8 men staid with me.

The third day he said he could go, but after we crossed Deep Hollow he got so bad we took him off his horse as he was appearently dieing[.] Twice we adminestered to him & he revived so much he said he could go, but then got so bad again I had to hold him on, and finally I had to brake his hold of the horn of the saddle—he said no go on—his last word for he was dead in 15 minutes. This time it never occurred to me to lay hands on him. We wraped him in his blanket and layed him ½ mile from Deep Hollow two rods below the road, having nothing but a hatchet to dig down on the hillside building up the lower side & over the top with rocks & sticks, and marked on a tree Henry P. Hoyt died on the 3—of sept. 1847 after 9 days illness with Jaunders [jaundice]. 80 miles from Sutters Fort.

We overtook the company in Bear Valley next day, and proceeded on our journey on the 5^th, and met S[amue]al. Branden [Brannen] with an Epistle from Prest. Young for all that did not intend to go to the Bluffs for their families to stay in Cal. and get work th<r>ough winter.

(They were the boys that discovered the gold.) This broke up our organization, and Andrew Litle [Lytle] was our Capt. When we passed the Summet of the Searies [Sierras] we found Hastings winter camp. At the base of the Mountain we struck the Trucky [Truckee] river then crossed an arm of the Great American Desert to the sink of the Humbol[d]t river, passing the Hot Boiling Springs. From the sink we traveled several days up the river finding plenty of water & grass. Then crossed a mountain to the noted Spring wells some of them without bottom appearantly. Then crossed the Goose Creek Mountains to Fort Hall on Snake River where we found Capt. Grant of the Hudson Bay Fur Company. When we told him where the Church were locating he said it would be a failure if we attempted to colonize there, for we could not raise a bushel of grain in Salt Lake Valley. Some of the company went round to Salt Lake, and the rest of us went by Soda Springs & up Bear River over to Ft. Bridger.