Tuesday, September 7
This morning our cattle were all missing and it still rains and snows very heavily. Pack and T. Cloward started early on foot to hunt the cattle but after following them over seven miles in the storm and seeing that they had kept on the road towards the Platte river, they returned to camp. It rained and snowed heavily till eleven o'clock at which time the balance of the camp arrived. John Pack asked the company to let us have some of their loose cattle to bring on our wagons till we overtook ours again, but the captains both generously refused for some cause or other. However, some of the brethren took their cattle out of their teams and let us have them and we moved onward. After traveling about thirteen miles we saw our cattle about four miles to the left of the road at the foot of a mountain. We halted and Lamb took one of the mules to fetch the cattle to the road. Soon after Pack and Jackson Redding came up and learning that we had found the cattle, they started to them to drive them to camp and Lamb being relieved, returned to the wagon. We harnessed up and arrived at the mineral spring about six o'clock, having traveled sixteen and a quarter miles. This spring has been represented as poisonous but if it is so, it must be in consequence of minerals under the water. The water has no bad taste till the cattle trample in it. It then becomes almost black as ink and this is probably what makes it poisonous.