s by an alkali sand, which parched our lips while the sun was
blistering our noses.

The river from here down to its sink is like all desert streams in the
dry season. It does not have a continuous current, but the water lies in
pools, alternating with places where the bed is dry and bare. In its
windings it averaged about twenty-five miles from one bend to another,
the trail leading a straight line like a railroad from one point to
another. These points were our camping-places. As it was useless to stop
between them we had to make the river or perish.

The willows were already browsed down to mere stubs, consequently there
was little or no feed for the stock. Wherever we could find any grass,
there we took the animals and tended them until they got their fill.
There was no game to be seen nor anything that had life, except horned
toads and lizards. The former could be seen in the sand all day. They
were of all sizes, ranging from a kernel of corn to a common toad, each
ornamented with the same covering of horns, beginning with a Turk's
crescent on the tip of the nose. As to the lizards, none could be seen
during the day, but at night there would be a whole family of them lying
right against one, having crept under the blankets to keep warm, I
suppose, as the nights were quite cool. Upon getting up in the morning
we would take our blankets by one end and give a jerk, and the lizards
would roll out like so many links of weinerwurst.

About midway to the river we began to get uncomfortably short of
provisions, having only some parched coffee, a little sugar, and a few
quarts of broken hardtack. We had neither flour nor meat for more than
two weeks. But of all our sufferings the greatest was that of thirst. It
was so intense that we forgot our hunger and our wearied and wornout
condition. Our sole thought was of water, and when we talked about what
amount we would drink when we came to a good spring no one ever
estimated less than a barrel full, and we honestly believed we could
drink that much at a single draught. We had, in a degree, become "loony"
on the subject, particularly in the middle of the day, when one could
not raise moisture in his mouth to even spit. For about ten days the
only water we had was obtained from the pools by which we would camp.
These pools were stagnant and their edges invariably lined with dead
cattle that had died while trying to get a drink. Selecting a carcass
that was solid enough to hold