"August 7. We travelled eighteen miles to-day. At ten o'clock we found a little plat of dry bunchgrass, and halted for an hour to allow the stock to graze. It was well we did, for to-night we find no grass at all. The river is over a mile from camp, and we are compelled to carry water all that distance for domestic use. We don't use very much."
For many miles the road continued through a rocky canyon, where the way was so perilous that the locked wagon-wheels had to be held in place by men on the upper side of the grade to prevent the wagons from tumbling down the bluffs into the raging current far below.
The entries in Jean's journal were interrupted at this time by a serious siege of toothache; and for this reason we find, under date of August 10 and 11, in Captain Ranger's painstaking chirography, the following entries:—
"We travelled about eight miles and again came to Snake River. The weather has been insufferably hot; and, as our weak and famished cattle were unable to go on, we were compelled to halt and await the coming of a breeze.
"The general face of the country is barren in the extreme. No vegetation is in sight except the ever abounding sagebrush. Gnarled, old, dwarfed, and shaggy, this seemingly boundless waste of sage subsists without apparent moisture; and for no conceivable purpose it lives on and on forever, staring stolidly at -the sun by day and keeping vigil with the moon and stars by night."
On the 1 2th of August Jean made the following entry: " We reached the banks of the river every few miles today, and camped near it at night. We find here no grass, game, or fuel; but, thank God, there is plenty of water.
"After - resting the cattle till sundown, daddie gave orders to yoke up and move ahead to a plat of grass that he had heard of, about six miles to the westward,
