Those sections of the trail which constitute connecting links, as it were, to the grander portions, can be accounted for almost as clearly as the main sections can. Forage and water must be regularly available to those traveling with horses, mules or oxen. These must be found in great abundance by those who are driving considerable droves over long stretches of arid wastes. In summer months, on the unsettled parched plains, these resources were insured only along river or creek bottoms. So in striking out from Independence or Saint Joseph for the Valley of the Platte to the north, to economize in the distance traveled to the Oregon goal, and insure supplies of the prime requisites—good water and grass—their course would be such as to bring them to nightly camps on the banks of one of the numerous streams flowing into the Kansas. Passing one they would make for a higher point on the next to the west so as to keep in a more direct line for Oregon. Fuel, so necessary for preparing their meals, was in that region found only on the banks of these streams. Along the Platte, the North Fork, and the Sweetwater “buffalo chips” sufficed fairly well the need of fuel, except the night was wet. In moving from the South Pass to the basin of the Columbia, mountainous country made a direct route impracticable. In the detour to the southwest the valleys of the tributaries of the Upper Green were utilized, and particularly the most convenient northwest course of the Bear River. The details of the course in this detour were determined by the stepping stones, as it were, of water, grass and wood. These were found in that desert region, too, only in the river and creek bottoms. On issuing from the South Pass, then, the valleys of the Little Sandy, Big Sandy, and the Green itself, had to be followed, with such crossings from one to the other as were feasible, and were in the interests of economy in distance, until they struck a tributary coming in from the west, up which a passage could be made and the divide crossed, bringing them into the Valley of the Bear, a part of the Great Salt Lake Basin. The Valley of the Bear has a general northwest direction of some seventy-five miles from where they usually entered it. It was in every way a natural road to them to the point where it makes its bend to the south. At this bend was the first fork made in early times by the California trail’s turning off to the south. The divide at this point between the Basin of the Great Salt Lake and the Valley of the Snake was comparatively easy. The Snake River Valley, with its barren wastes, deep precipitous canyons, sharp lava rocks, made a trying portion of the route. There were several optional routes. None so acceptable as the Platte Valley had furnished. To follow the Snake in its long bend to the north would have led them far out of their way, so they took the available valleys of the Burnt and Powder rivers that led them farthest