feet deep on the loftier ridges which they were obliged to cross.  The struggle with the elements, during the last two hundred miles before gaining Fort Bridger, was desperate.  Nearly a third of the horses died from cold, hunger, and fatigue; everything that could be spared was thrown out to lighten the wagons, and the road was strewn with military accoutrements from the Rocky Ridge to Green River.  On the 20th of November, Colonel Cooke reached the camp with a command entirely incapacitated for active service.

The place selected by Colonel Johnston for the winter-quarters of the army was on the bank of Black’s Fork, about two miles above Fort Bridger, on a spot sheltered by high bluffs which rise abruptly from the bottom at a distance of five or six hundred yards from the channel of the stream.  The banks of the Fork were fringed with willow brush and cottonwood trees, blasted in some places where the Mormons had attempted to deprive the troops of fuel.  The trees were fortunately too green to burn, and the fire swept through acres, doing no more damage than to consume the dry leaves and char the bark.  The water of the Fork, clear and pure, rippled noisily over a stony bed between two unbroken walls of ice.  The civil officers of the Territory fixed their quarters in a little nook in the wood above the military camp.  The Colonel, anticipating a change of encampment, determined not to construct quarters of logs or sod for the army.  A new species of tent, which had just been introduced, was served out for its winter dwellings.  An iron tripod supported a pole from the top of which depended a slender but strong hoop.  Attached to this, the canvas sloped to the ground, forming a tent in the shape of a regular cone.  The opening at the top caused a draught, by means of which a fire could be kept up beneath the tripod without choking the inmates with smoke.  An Indian lodge had evidently been the model of the inventor.  Most of the civil officers, however, dug square holes in the ground, over which they built log huts, plastering the cracks with mud.  Their little town they named Eckelsville, after the Chief Justice.  A depot for all the military stores was established at Fort Bridger, where a strong detachment was encamped.  At the time of its occupation, the Fort consisted merely of two stone walls, one twenty, the other about ten feet in height, inclosing quadrangles fifty paces long and forty broad.  These walls were built of cobble-stones cemented with mortar.  Half-a-dozen cannonballs would have knocked them to pieces, although they constituted a formidable defence against infantry.  When the Mormons evacuated the post, they burned all the buildings inside these quadrangles.  Colonel Johnston proceeded to set up additional defences for the depot, and within a month two lunettes were completed with ditches and chevaux-de-frise, in each of which was mounted a piece of artillery.