AN APPROACHING STORM loi
burned us like blisters of Spanish flies. Our wagonbeds were hoisted to the tops of their standards to keep them from taking water, and at a given signal from daddie, they were all plunged pell-mell into the quicksand, over which teams, drivers, wagons, and all were compelled to move quickly to avoid catastrophe.
"Poor dear mother suffered from constant nervous fear because of the quicksand and the danger that some of the children might be drowned. It took us two and a half hours to ford the stream; but we reached the opposite bank without accident, and camped near an old buffalo wallow, where we get clearer water than that of the Platte, but we are not allowed to drink it till it has been boiled. Cholera has broken out in the trains both before and behind us; and daddie lays our escape from attack thus far to drinking boiled water. We have no fuel but buffalo chips, and almost no grass for the poor stock. The game has disappeared altogether, and the fishes in the Platte don't bite. But we have plenty of beans and bacon, coffee, flour, and dried apples; so we shall not starve.
"June I. The day has been intensely hot. The stifling air shimmers, and the parched earth glitters as it bakes in the sun. The mud has changed to a fine, impalpable dust, and the loaded air is too oppressive to breathe, if it could be avoided. We passed a number of newly made graves during the day. We meet returning teams every day that have given up the journey as a bad job. Daddie often says he'd die before he'd retrace his tracks, and then he wouldn't do it! We found at sundown, just as we were losing hope, a bountiful spring of clear, cold water, beside which we have halted for the night.
"June 3. Another insufferably hot day. But we encountered at nightfall a stiff west wind, which soon arose to a gale, in the teeth of which we with difficulty made camp and cooked our food. Heavy clouds blacken the sky as I write, and vivid flashes of sheet lightning, which
