ater casks in the morning, so we had a dry luncheon in the hot sand, under the blistering sunshine. Our shoes have all given out from constant walking, and we are reduced to moccasins, which we get by barter among the Indian women. But the deerskin things afford us no protection from the still abounding cacti, which seem to thrive best where there is the least moisture.
"We are encamped once more on the banks of the Snake. It was quite dark when a halt was ordered.
"August 19. Glory to God in the highest! We are once more within sight of some trees that are not sagebrush. They are off to the westward, several miles away, and their stately presence marks the course of a stream we cannot see.
"August 20. The stream proved to be the Owyhee, — a lukewarm, clear, and rapid little river with a pebbly bottom. The air is so foul from the stench of decaying cattle, the water of the little river is so warm, and the heat so intolerable that sickness and death must soon ensue if the conditions do not change. It is no wonder that we see many graves by the roadside. Most of them are the last resting-places of mothers who have mercifully fallen asleep and been buried, often with their babes in their arms.
"August 21. Old Fort Boise lies opposite our camp, away beyond and across Snake River, looming in the distance like a mediaeval fortress from the midst of a gray, dry moat. Our printed guide, a little pamphlet written by General Palmer in the forties, tells us that this fort was built by the Hudson Bay Company for shelter and storage, and as a means of protection from the Indians, with whom the traders did a thriving business when the century was young. It is now fallen into decay, and is doubtless the abode of bats and birds and creeping things.
"The men who left our company on the 16th inst., in a boat made of a wagon-bed, rejoined us to-day, having had all the navigation on the Snake they seemed to
