As I had no team to drive I took every opportunity to climb the mountains along the route, reaching the highest elevations even if they were several miles from the trail.  I sometimes remained out all night.  I took Mr. Arcane’s field glass with me and was thus able to see all there was of the country.  I soon became satisfied that going north was not taking us in the direction we ought to go.  I frequently told them so, but they still persisted in following on.  I went to the leaders and told them we were going back toward Salt Lake again, not making any headway toward California.  They insisted they were following the directions of Williams, the mountaineer; and they had not yet got as far north as he indicated.  I told them, and Mr. Bennett and others, that we must either turn west, or retrace our steps and get back into the regular Los Angeles road again.  In the morning we held another consultation and decided to turn west here, and leave the track we had been following.

Off we turned at nearly right angles to our former course, to the west now, over a piece of table land that gave us little trouble in breaking our own road.  When we camped, the oxen seemed very fond of a white weed that was very plenty, and some borrowed a good deal of trouble thinking that perhaps it might be poison.  I learned afterwards that this plant was the nutritious white sage, which cattle eat freely, with good results.  We now crossed a low range and a small creek running south, and here were also some springs.  Some corn had been grown here by the Indians.  Pillars of sand stone, fifteen feet high and very slim were round about in several places and looked strange enough.  The next piece of table land sloped to the east, and among the sage grew also a bunch grass a foot high, which had seeds like broom-corn seeds.  The Indians had gathered the grass and made it in piles of one hundred pounds or so, and used it for food as I found by examining their camps.

One day I climbed a high mountain where some pine grew, in order to get a view of the country.  As I neared its base I came to a flat rock, perhaps fifty feet square.  I heard some pounding noise as I came near, but what ever it was, it ceased on my approach.  There were many signs of the rock being used as a camp, such as pine burrs, bones of various kinds of animals, and other remains of food which lay every where about and on the rock.  Near the center was a small oblong stone fitted into a hole.  I took it out and found it covered a fine well of water about three feet deep and was thus protected against any small animal being drowned in it.  I went on up the mountain and from the top I saw that the land west of us looked more and more barren.