In the morning, as Rogers and I were about to start, several of the oldest men came to us with their addresses and wished us to forward them to their families if we ever got within the reach of mails.  These men shed tears, and we did also as we parted.  We turned silently away and again took up our march.

As we went down the canon we came to one place where it was so narrow, that a man or a poor ox could barely squeeze through between the rocks, and in a few miles more reached the open level plain.  When three or four miles out on the trail and not far from the hills we came to a bunch of quite tall willows.  The center of the bunch had been cut out and the branches woven in so as to make a sort of corral.  In the center of this was a spring of good water and some good grass growing around.  This was pretty good evidence that some one had been here before.  We took a good drink and filled our canteens anew, for we did not expect to get another drink for two or three days at least.

We took the trail again and hurried on as the good water made us feel quite fresh.  After a few miles we began to find the bones of animals, some badly decayed and some well preserved.  All the heads were those of horses, and it puzzled us to know where they came from.  As we passed along we noticed the trail was on a slight up grade and somewhat crooked.  If we stepped off from it the foot sank in about two inches in dirt finer than the finest flour.  The bones were scattered all along, sometimes the bones of several animals together.  Was it the long drive, poison water, or what?  It was evident they had not been killed but had dropped along the way.

It was a dreary trail at best, and these evidences of death did not help to brighten it in the least.  We wondered often where it led to and what new things would be our experience.  After walking fast all day we came to quite an elevation, where we could stand and look in all directions.  The low black range where we left the Jayhawkers was in sight, and this spur of the great snowy mountains extended a long way to the south, and seemed to get lower and lower, finally ending in low rocky buttes, a hundred miles away.  Some may think this distance very far to see, but those who have ever seen the clear atmosphere of that region will bear me out in these magnificent distances.  Generally a mountain or other object seen at a distance would be three or four times as far off as one would judge at first sight, so deceptive are appearances there.  The broad south end of the great mountain which we first saw the next morning after we left the wagons, was now plain in sight, and peak after peak extending away to the north, all of them white with snow.  Standing thus out in the plain we could see the breadth of the mountain east and west, and it seemed as though it must have been nearly a hundred miles.  The south end was very abrupt and sank as one into a great plain in which we stood, twenty miles from the mountain’s base.