California, and that the Bennet party did not feel inclined to follow them any farther in that direction.  They replied that their map told them to go north a day or more and then they would find the route as represented.  They would then turn west and reach Owen’s Lake and from there there would be no more trouble.  The Jayhawker crowd seemed to think they could go anywhere and no difficulty could happen which they couldn’t overcome.  Bennett’s little train turned west from this point and the Jayhawkers went on north, but before night they changed their minds and came following on after Bennett whom they overtook and passed, again taking the lead.

Thus far the country had been well watered and furnished plenty of grass, and most of them talked and believed that this kind of rolling country would last all the way through.  The men at leisure scattered around over the hills on each side of the route taken by the train, and in advance of it, hunting camping places and making a regular picnic of it.  There were no hardships, and one man had a fiddle which he tuned up evenings and gave plenty of fine music.  Joy and happiness seemed the rule, and all of the train were certainly having a good time of it.

But gradually there came a change as the wagon wheels rolled westward.  The valleys seemed to have no streams in them, and the mountain ranges grew more and more broken, and in the lower ground a dry lake could be found, and water and grass grew scarce—­so much so that both men and oxen suffered.  These dry lake beds deceived them many times.  They seemed as if containing plenty of water, and off the men would go to explore.  They usually found the distance to them about three times as far as they at first supposed, and when at last they reached them they found no water, but a dry, shining bed, smooth as glass, but just clay, hard as a rock.  Most of these dry lakes showed no outlet, nor any inlet for that matter, though at some period in the past they must have been full of water.  Nothing grew in the shape of vegetables or plants except a small, stunted, bitter brush.

Away to the west and north there was much broken country, the mountain ranges higher and rougher and more barren, and from almost every sightly elevation there appeared one or more of these dry lake beds.  One night after about three days of travel the whole of the train of twenty seven wagons was camped along the bank of one of these lakes, this one with a very little water in it not more than one fourth or one half an inch in depth, and yet spread out to the width of a mile or more.  It was truly providential, for by digging holes along the border the water would run into them and prove abundant for all, both oxen and men.  If it had proved dry, as so many before had proved, or if we had been a few days earlier or later we might not have found a drop.  This proved to be the last time the whole twenty seven wagons were gathered in one camp together.