We were out of this camp at daylight.  Very little rest for some of us, but we must make the best of the cool morning while the snow is hard, and so move on as soon as we can see the way.  As it gets lighter and the sun comes up red and hot out of the desert we have a grand view of the great spread of the country to south and of the great snow mountain to the north and east, the peak standing over the place where we left our wagons nineteen days before, on the edge of Death Valley.  The glare of the snow on the sun makes us nearly blind, but we hurry on to try to cross it before it becomes so soft as to slump under our feet.  It is two or three feet in the deepest places, and probably has been three times as deep when freshly fallen, but it is now solid and icy.  Our rawhide moccasins protect our feet from cold, and both we and the animals got along fairly well, the oxen breaking through occasionally as the snow softened up, but generally walking on the top as we did ourselves.  The snow field reached much farther down the western slope than we had hoped, much farther than on the eastern side.  Before we got out of it, we saw the track of some animal which had crossed our route, but as it had been made some days before and now could be seen only as some holes in the surface, we could not determine what sort of an animal it was.

A mile or two down the hill we were at last out of the snow, and a little farther on we came to the little babbling brook Rogers and I had so long painted in the most refreshing colors to the tired women, with water, wood and grass on every hand, the three greatest blessings of a camper’s life.  Here was where Rogers and I had cooked and eaten our meat of crow, quail and hawk, pretty hard food, but then, the blessed water!

There it danced and jumped over the rocks singing the merriest song one ever heard, as it said—­Drink, drink ye thirsty ones your fill—­the happiest sweetest music to the poor starved, thirsty souls, wasted down almost to haggard skeletons.  O! if some poet of wildest imagination could only place himself in the position of those poor tired travelers to whom water in thick muddy pools had been a blessing, who had eagerly drank the fluid even when so salt and bitter us to be repulsive, and now to see the clear, pure liquid, distilled from the crystal snow, abundant, free, filled with life and health—­and write it in words—­the song of that joyous brook and set it to the music that it made as it echoed in gentle waves from the rocks and lofty walls, and with the gentle accompaniment of rustling trees—­a soft singing hush, telling of rest, and peace, and happiness.

New life seemed to come to the dear women.  “O!  What a beautiful stream!” say they, and they dip in a tin cup and drink, then watch in dreaming admiration the water as it goes hurrying down; then dip and drink again, and again watch the jolly rollicking brook as if it were the most entertaining thing in the whole wide earth.  “Why can’t such a stream as that run out of the great Snow Mountain in the dry Death Valley?” say they—­“so we could get water on the way.”