ny rate, even if there were
other men about. For the time it really seemed as if there was very
little hope for us and I have often repeated the following lines as very
closely describing my own feelings at that time.

Oh hands, whose loving, gentle grasp I loosed.
When first this weary journey was begun.
If I could feel your touch as once I could.
How gladly would I wish my work undone.

_Harriet Keynon_.

During the evening, I had a talk with Capt. Asa Haines, in which he said
he left a good home in Illinois, where he had everything he could wish
to eat, and every necessary comfort, and even some to spare, and now he
felt so nearly worn out that he had many doubts whether he could live to
reach the mountains, on the other side. He was so deeply impressed that
he made me promise to let his wife and family know how I found him and
how he died, for he felt sure he would never see the California mines. I
said I might not get through myself, but he thought we were so young and
strong that we would struggle through. He said if he could only be home
once more he would be content to stay. This was the general tenor of the
conversation. There was no mirth, no jokes, and every one seemed to feel
that he was very near the end of his life, and such a death as stood
before them, choking, starving in a desert was the most dreary outlook I
ever saw.

This camp of trouble, of forlorn hope, on the edge of a desert
stretching out before us like a small sea, with no hope for relief
except at the end of a struggle which seemed almost hopeless, is more
than any pen can paint, or at all describe. The writer had tried it
often. Picture to yourself, dear reader the situation and let your own
imagination do the rest. It can never come up to the reality.

In the morning, as Rogers and I were about to start, several of the
oldest men came to us with their addresses and wished us to forward them
to their families if we ever got within the reach of mails. These men
shed tears, and we did also as we parted. We turned silently away and
again took up our march.

As we went down the canon we came to one place where it was so narrow,
that a man or a poor ox could barely squeeze through between the rocks,
and in a few miles more reached the open level plain. When three or four
miles out on the trail and not far from the hills we came to a bunch of
quite tall willows. The center of the bunch had been cut out and the
branches wo