we left, but were still poor.  They had rested for some time and might feel able to go along willingly for a few days at least.  I was handy with the needle, and helped them to complete the harness for the oxen, while Bennett and John went to the lake to get a supply of salt to take along, a most necessary article with our fresh meat.  I looked around a little at our surroundings, and could see the snow still drifting over the peak of the snowy mountain as we had seen it farther east, where we were ourselves under the burning sun.  This was now pretty near February first, or midwinter.  The eastern side of this great mountain was too steep to be ascended, and no sign of a tree could be seen on the whole eastern slope.  The range of mountains on the east side of this narrow valley were nearly all the volcanic, barren in the extreme, and the roughest of all the mountains we had ever seen.  I had now looked pretty thoroughly, and found it to be pretty nearly a hundred miles long, and this was the only camp I had seen where water could be had.

When Mrs. Bennet was ready to show me what to do on the cloth harness, we took a seat under the wagon, the only shady place and began work.  The great mountain, I have spoken of as the snow mountain has since been known as Telescope Peak, reported to be 11,000 feet high.  It is in the range running north and south and has no other peak so high.  Mrs. Bennett questioned me closely about the trip, and particularly if I had left anything out which I did not want her to know.  She said she saw her chance to ride was very slim, and she spoke particularly of the children, and that it was impossible for them to walk.  She said little Martha had been very sick since we had been gone, and that for many days they had expected her to die.  They had no medicine to relieve her and the best they could do was to select the best of the ox meat, and make a little soup of it and feed her, they had watched her carefully for many days and nights, expecting they would have to part with her any time and bury her little body in the sands.  Sometimes it seemed as if her breath would stop, but they had never failed in their attentions, and were at last rewarded by seeing her improve slowly, and even to relish a little food, so that if no relapse set in they had hopes to bring her through.  They brought the little one and showed her to me, and she seemed so different from what she was when we went away.  Then she could run about camp climb out and in the wagons, and move about so spry that she reminded one of a quail.  Now she was strangely misshapen.  Her limbs had lost all the flesh and seemed nothing but skin and bones, while her body had grown corpulent and distended, and her face had a starved pinched and suffering look, with no healthy color in it.

She told me of their sufferings while we were gone, and said she often dreamed she saw us suffering fearfully for water, and lack of food and could only picture to herself as their own fate, that they must leave the children by the trail side, dead, and one by one drop out themselves in the same way.  She said she dreamed often of her old home where bread was plenty, and then to awake to find her husband and children starving was a severe trial indeed, and the contrast terrible.  She was anxious to get me to express an opinion as to whether I thought we could get the oxen down the falls where we had so much trouble.