Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/141

Rh been compelled to travel another day, and perhaps longer, before we would have come to another stream.

This fortunate circumstance—finding the pool—was highly pleasing to us. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since we had drunk water, and we had been traveling rapidly during the day, over the dry plains and through the hot sun. We noticed, in the course of the day, that our voices became much changed, from lack of moisture, and as we refrained form eating, also, there was a feeling of emptiness in the stomach, peculiar, and very disagreeable. When we came to the pool, our parched lips did not stop to question the quality of the water: and our animals were equally as eager as ourselves: they plunged into it, and we were compelled to drag them away to prevent them from killing themselves. The person whose turn it was to guard during the day, was obliged to watch the pool almost constantly, in order to keep the animals from drinking too much. We climbed into the tree with our hatchets, and trimmed off the dry limbs, which furnished us sufficient fuel to cook with and in a very short time, we had banished both hunger and thirst, and feeling secure in our secluded and unfrequented position, we contrasted this present comparatively comfortable and safe condition, very pleasantly with the past.

In the morning we followed the breaks until they joined with others, and finally brought us to a deep dry channel, along which there was timber; it continued to increase in size; as we proceeded down, and on the 16th of August, about the middle of the day we came again to the emigrant's trail, and knew that it was the Little Blue River, down which we had been traveling.

We saw no more of the Pawnees, and on the 22d we crossed the Big Blue River, and came into the country of the Kanzas Indians, from whom we had nothing to fear so long as we kept a strict guard; which we never failed to do in an Indian country.

On the 24th, we met a small company bound for California, and on the 25th, the wagons of Messrs. Adams & Bissonette, Indian traders, of Fort Platte.

On the 27th, we crossed the Kanzas River; where, finding the water too deep to take our baggage on our horses, we were compelled to carry it over on our shoulders.

On the 29th, late in the night, we passed the boundary line, between the States and the Indian Territory, and encamped near West Post,