the Rio San Ysabel. The Native Americans told them it flowed west from there into a lake (Sevier Lake) and beyond. The Sevier Lake has no outlet, so the indigenes may have been referring to the west-flowing Humboldt River, which originates over 150 miles northwest, and were misinterpreted by the explorers. Despite Dominguez and Vélez de Escalante's doubts that the Green and Sevier Rivers were one and the same, the maps Miera produced do not include the Rio San Ysabel and depict the Buenaventura flowing southwest from where they encountered it in northeastern Utah, to the Sevier Lake in west-central Utah. In an accompanying note to king Charles III of Spain, Miera recommended building several missions in the area and mentioned the possibility of a water way to the Pacific Ocean, via the Buenaventura or the Timpanogos River: the river Miera depicts on his map as flowing west from the Great Salt Lake (GSL). Although Miera documented a correct description of the GSL given to them by the indigenes the Spanish assumed that what they thought had been described was incorrect and interpreted their description of the "extremely salty" lake as the ocean and assumed that the description of the river flowing from "Lake Timpanogos", which is the Jordan River flowing between Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake, was of a waterway to the Pacific. The error of depicting the Buenaventura as flowing southwest to a lake was perpetuated by early explorers and cartographers such as Alexander von Humboldt, who used a map from the Dominguez and Escalanté expedition to prepare his maps in 1804 and 1809. Zebulon Pike used Humboldt's maps to prepare his map for his book from 1810. Aaron Arrowsmith in 1814 published a map depicting the Buenaventura flowing to "Lac Sale". These cartographers conservatively did not try to chart the area west of that explored by Dominguez and Escalante. Extending the Buenaventura West to the Pacific There had long been a hope that a river flowing west from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean would provide an easy route for travel and trade. This dream was the descendant of the long sought Northwest Passage. When Francisco Garcés drew his maps of Alta California, he did not understand the nature of the Sierra Nevada, and he drew the "San Felipe" or San Joaquin River originating beyond the Sierras in the Great Basin and flowing to