e weather became so cold that I was
very uncomfortable; the fire, however, had not extended beyond this
distance, for in about an hour and a half from our departure we came to
the grass again, and I fortunately got rid of my headache. Our cavalry
was exceedingly pleased by the change, the horses repeatedly winnowing
to each other, as if to express their satisfaction. I here perceived a
live gopher, or geomys, feebly running in the grass, and, dismounting,
caught it. It apparently had strayed from its burrow, and had suffered
from the weather. After examining it I let it go again, as it was
impossible to take care of it, and I did not like to consign it to the
men, as I knew they would kill and eat it, for they spared nothing.

As the evening advanced it became excessively cold, and a sharp wind,
accompanied with frozen sleet, set in from the northeast: this soon
became so thick that I could scarcely look up, much more see anything in
the direction in which I was proceeding. Securing my person and ears as
well as I could with my blanket coat, I left it to the mare--who
Renville told me had been more than once to Lake Travers--to take her
own course. At length the sleet became so dense that I lost sight of
everybody except the little foal, which, generally lagging behind in the
wake of its dam, occasionally trotted up to her when in her great
anxiety she called for it. I never saw greater marks of maternal feeling
in an animal than in this poor creature to her young one.

As we advanced my situation became exceedingly painful: the frozen sleet
came in streams upon my face and eyes when I looked up; my feet and
hands were so cold that I had scarcely any power over them; my whole
exterior, as well as the head and neck of the mare, was covered with a
glazing of ice; night was advancing, and we were without a guide, upon
a dreary and shelterless moor of very great extent, and far beyond our
present day's journey, with no prospect of an abatement of the storm.
In the course of a somewhat adventurous life I have occasionally had to
meet with serious privations and to look danger rather steadily in the
face, but I had never been where there was so slight a chance of any
favorable change. I had not even the comfort before me that every
bleak moor in England offers under similar circumstances to the
imagination,--some kind of shelter to receive us at last, if we were
not overpowered by the inclemency of the weather. It became abso