mal drops down.
Wagon after wagon is stopped, the strongest animals are taken out of
the harness, the most important effects are taken out of the wagon and
placed on their backs and all hurry away, leaving behind wagons,
property and animals that, too weak to travel lie and broil in the sun
in an agony of thirst until death relieves them of their tortures. The
owners hurry on with but one object in view, that of reaching the
Carson River before the broiling sun shall reduce them to the same
condition. Morning comes, and the light of day presents a scene more
horrid than the rout of a defeated army; dead stock line the roads,
wagons, rifles, tents, clothes, everything but food may be found
scattered along the road; here an ox, who standing famished against a
wagon bed until nature could do no more, settles back into it and dies;
and there a horse kicking out his last gasp in the burning sand, men
scattered along the plain and stretched out among the dead stock like
corpses, fill out the picture. The desert! you must see it and feel it
in an August day, when legions have crossed it before you, to realize
it in all its horrors. But heaven save you from the experience.

An incident occurred this evening which shows well of the selfishness
of some people on this route. It was soon after dark; we had taken off
the packs to rest our horses, and were sitting and lying in the sage
bushes beside the road; one of our companions had a few miles back been
compelled to leave a horse, which from mistaken feelings of sympathy
for the poor animal, he had neglected to kill. While sitting there, a
company of packers came along the road, when, although it was so dark
that I could not distinguish one animal from another, our friend caught
up his rifle, cocked and presented it towards one of them, exclaiming
in an angry tone, "Get off that horse, you g----d d--n--d scoundrel, or
I'll shoot him down under you." The fellow slid off the horse
instantly, when our friend gave him one of the "dog-onit-est" blowings
up, as the Missourians say, that one fellow ever got for riding the
poor animal after he had given out. It was our friend's horse, who,
dark as it was, recognized his faithful animal. The fellow sloped
without saying a word in his defence.

6th. Morning still finds us dragging our weary steps along on the
desert, with nothing near but endless sand hills and beds of clay.
Passed Sublett's and Trimbles and Williams's wagons, which they w