“August 16. Weather insufferably hot. Lost an ox to-day from eating a poisonous herb. At this rate we shall soon be left with one wagon. The cattle must hustle for food after every day’s pull, making it very hard to keep life in their poor skeleton bodies.”
On the evening of the 18th Jean resumed her writing, which ran in part as follows:—
“The long and dreary road is rough and hilly, and the yielding sand is deep. We found to-day at noon a patch of dry grass, and stopped to graze our famishing cattle. But we neglected, by some mischance, to fill our water-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 Boisé lies opposite our camp, away beyond and across Snake River, looming in the distance like a mediæval 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 care for. They were a woe-begone and God-and-man-forsaken set; and their chief fear was that they would not be permitted to come into our train again on the old footing. Daddie—dear, big-hearted, hospitable man—took them in, though they deserved a different fate; but we think they’ll be content to let the best that can be had alone hereafter.
“August 23. After a long, hot, and arduous journey of over thirty miles, and consuming two days of the most trying experience possible, we reached Malheur River, another tributary of the Snake. But we failed to find any food for the cattle, and were compelled to pull out again the next morning before dawn, headed for what appeared to be a stream of water, as we judged from a fringe of willows. But when we reached the bed of the stream it was dry as a bone. We were compelled to stop, though, as it was then high noon, and it was reported twelve miles to the next water. So a part of our force was detailed to dig a well in the creek bottom for water for domestic use, and the rest were sent back to the Malheur to water the stock, as soon as they had eaten their fill of the dry grass, which to us is more precious than gold, or anything else just now but water.
“On the 24th we left this camp and travelled down the dry bed of the creek for several miles, through a valley that had evidently been missed by the trains ahead, as the grass was fine and abundant. After leaving this valley, we travelled over a blind trail through a hot, dusty ravine till ten o’clock at night, when we reached some sulphur springs and encamped, feeling cross, half sick, and disgusted with all the world. The air is heavy with the fumes of sulphur, and Limpy says we are less than half a mile from hell.”