all night.  All began to talk more and feel more hopeful of getting through.  The women began to say that every step brought them so much nearer to the house we had told them about on the other side and often said the work was not so very hard after all.  Really it was not so bad travelling as we had at first.  We were now nine days from the wagons.  “Are we half way?” was the question they began to ask.  We had to answer them that more than one half the hard days were over, if one half the distance had not been traveled, and with the better walking and getting hardened to the work, they would get over the last half better than the first.  One thing was a little hard.  All of our beans and flour had been used up, and now the wheat was about gone also.  We had cooked it, and it seemed best, trying to build up our strength, where it was most needed for the greatest trials, and now we thought they would be able to get along on the meat.  We had reached the base of the great snow mountain.  It seems strange with the mass of snow resting above, and which must be continually thawing more or less, no ravines or large streams of water were produced flowing down this side.  It seemed dry all around its base, which is is very singular, with the snow so near.

We had now our barren canon to go down, and right here was the big trail coming down from the north, which we took and followed.  We said all these good things about the road, and encouraged the people all we could to keep in good spirits and keep moving.  We told them we thought we knew how to manage to get them safe over the road if they only fully endeavored to do it.  We were all quite young, and not in the decline of life as were most of them who had perished by the way.  No reader can fully realize how much we had to say and do to keep up courage, and it is to this more than anything else that we did which kept up the lagging energies and inspired the best exertion.  I don’t know but we painted some things a little brighter than they were, and tried to hide some of the most disheartening points of the prospects ahead, for we found the mind had most to do with it after all.  We have no doubt that if we had not done all we could to keep up good courage, the women would have pined away and died before reaching this far.  Whenever we stopped talking encouragingly, they seemed to get melancholy and blue.

There was some pretty good management to be exercised still.  The oxen were gradually growing weaker, and we had to kill the weakest one every time, for if the transportation of our food failed, we should yet be open to the danger of starvation.  As it was, the meat on their frames was very scarce, and we had to use the greatest economy to make it last and waste nothing.  We should now have to kill one of our oxen every few days, as our other means of subsistence had been so completely used up.  The women contracted a strange dislike to this region and said they never wanted to see any part of it again.