The forty-second parallel route was surveyed by Lieutenant E. G. Beckwith, of the third artillery, in the summer of 1854. East of Fort Bridger, the War Department felt it unnecessary to make a special survey, since Frémont had traversed and described the country several times and Stansbury had surveyed it carefully as recently as 1849-1850. At the beginning of his campaign Beckwith was at Salt Lake. During April he visited the Green River Valley and Fort Bridger, proving by his surveys the entire practicability of railway construction here. In May he skirted the south end of Great Salt Lake and passed along the Humboldt to the Sacramento Valley. He had no important adventures and was impressed most by the squalor of the digger Indians, whose grass-covered, beehive-shaped "wick-ey-ups" were frequently seen. As his band approached the Indians would fearfully cache their belongings in the undergrowth. In the morning "it was indeed a novel and ludicrous sight of wretchedness to see them approach their bush and attempt, slyly (for they still tried to conceal from me what they were about), to repossess themselves of their treasures, one bringing out a piece of old buckskin, a couple of feet square, smoked, greasy, and torn; another a half dozen rabbit-skins in an equally filthy condition, sewed together, which he would swing over his shoulders by a string--his only blanket or clothing; while a third brought out a blue string, which he girded about him and walked away in full dress--one of the lords of the soil." It needed no special emphasis in Beckwith's report to prove that a railway could follow this middle route, since thousands of emigrants had a personal knowledge of its conditions. [Illustration: FORT SNELLING From an old photograph, loaned by Horace B. Hudson, of Minneapolis.]