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Rh The sufferings of the wounded were horrible. Nor were they ended when they came to Bernard's camp, for on the 19th they were sent to Fort Klamath, seventy miles away, over a rough road, three miles of which were naked boulders. And there were others whose sufferings were agonizing to bear or to behold. It was not until between one and two o'clock of the 18th that Green's command reached camp. When a halt was called, the men fell asleep standing or riding. Their clothes were in shreds from crawling among the rocks; their shoes were worn away from their feet. If they had been a month in the field, they could not have looked more used up in every way. After making arrangements for the removal of the wounded to Fort Klamath under charge of Jackson with an escort of twenty men on the night of the 19th, Green and Mason returned to headquarters on the night of the 18th, attended by ten Indian scouts, taking the road around the north side of the lake.

The loss sustained in the reconnoissance—it was no more—of the 17th was nine killed and thirty wounded, including in the latter list Captain David Perry and Lieutenant John G. Kyle of the regulars, both wounded at the crossing of the ravine before the stronghold, and Lieutenant George Roberts of the California volunteer riflemen. The dead were left upon the field, or if alive when left, were soon despatched by the Indian women. There was no doubt that the army had suffered a total defeat at the hands of the Modocs, or that the army officers were surprised by it. Their utterances after the affair were very different from their confident predictions before the trial. "The difficulties encountered in moving; to connect our lines by the lake side were very great," Wheaton reports, "the troops being hardly able to crawl over the sharp rocks and ledges that separate them, and at the same time fight a well-entrenched and desperate enemy, proverbially skillful as marksmen, and armed with good rifles. Bernard had been unable during the en-