ier for herself and children, and she
laid it aside for a few moments till she could attend to some other
duties before cooking it. Darkness coming on meanwhile, some
unprincipled, ungallant thief stole it, and only bits of offal and
almost uneatable pieces were left to sustain their lives. That any one
could steal the last morsel from a woman and her children surpasses
belief, but yet it was plain that there was at least one man in the
party who could do it. No one can fully understand or describe such
scenes as this unless he has looked into just such hungry looking,
haggard eyes and faces, a mixture of determination and despair, the
human expression almost vanishing, and the face of a starving wolf or
jackal taking its place, There are no words to paint such a state of
things to him who has never seen and known.

But there were true men, true, charitable hearts in that little band.
Though death stared them in the face they never forgot their fellow men.
As they slowly crawled along many would wander here and there beside the
trail and fall behind, especially the weaker ones, and many were the
predictions that such and such a one would never come up again, or reach
the camp. Then it was that these noble souls, tired almost beyond
recovery themselves, would take water and go back to seek the wandering
ones and give them drink and help them on. More than one would thus have
perished in the sands but for the little canteen of water carried back
by some friend. Only a swallow or two would often revive their failing
strength and courage, and with slow step they would move on again. How
much good a crust of bread would have done such a poor creature. Bread
there was none--nothing but the flesh of their poor oxen, wasted and
consumed by days of travel and lack of food till it had no goodness in
it. Even the poor oxen, every night seemed to be the end of their
walking; every morning it was feared that that would be the last time
they would be able to rise upon their feet.

Already five or six days had passed since they left the camp at the
willows where they had their last supply of water, and still they were
on the desert. The journey was longer than they had expected, partly
owing to the slow progress they had made for there were frequent stops
to rest or they could not move at all. The mountains seemed nearer every
day, and the trees were outlined more plainly each morning as they
started out. Capt. Doty used every circum