A few weeks into the trip, they’d encountered another contingent of forty-niners, led by a fast-talking New Yorker named Orson K. Smith. Smith carried a crude map, which, he claimed, showed a different, faster path west. Most of the members of Manly’s group decided to follow Smith, only to reverse course a few days later, when they found their way barred by a canyon so deep it couldn’t be crossed by wagon.
