Page:The Prairie Flower; Or, Adventures In the Far West.djvu/112



THE PRAIR/E FLOWER; OR,

this, we resolved l.o take some along as a specimen, and should we escape, and our surmises regarding it be confirmed, either return ourselves, or put some hardy Ad venturer in possession of the secret. If this were indeed gold, it must of course have its source in some mine in the vicin ity; and this important discovery alone, we felt, would amply compensate us for all we had dared and suffered in venturing hither.

The next morning, like each of the pre ceding, being clear and serene, we resolv ed to depart, and again try our fortunes. Looking toward the west, we beheld in the distance another camping ground; and hastening down the western slope of the hills, we made our way directly toward it, over a slightly undulating country, less sterile in its appearance than the desert we had crossed the previous week. We were not able to reach it till after night fall, and suffered more or less through the day for want of water. Here we again found a rich soil, wooded with what I be lieve is termed the sage tree, and wa- -tered by several delightful springs and streams, in some of which we bathed, and of which we drank, much to our relief.

To follow up our progress in detail, would be to take up more space than can now be spared for the purpose, and, in a great measure, to repeat, with trifling va riations, what I have already given.

Suffice it, therefore, that our journey was continued day after day sometimes over sandy deserts of two days' travel, which blistered our feet, and where we again suffered all the horrors of burning- thirst sometimes over rough, dangerous

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and volcanic grounds, along side of giddy precipices, and yawning chasms, and adown steep declivities, where a single misstep would have been fatal sometimes across streams too deep to ford, and which we were obliged to swim subsisting, a .part of the way, on roots and such game us we could kill, (our supply of jerk hav ing given out,) and sleeping at night on the sands, in the open air, or perhaps un der the shelter of some overhanging rock occasionally drenched with a storm of cold rain, without a lire to dry our wet gar ments, and suffering more or less from hunger, and drought, and weariness, and violent rheumatic pains.

Such was our pilgrimage, over an unex plored country; and yet through all our sufferings, save the first, when we lost our horses, our spirits were almost ever buoy ant, and we experienced a rapturous de light known only to the adventuitr.

Some six weeks from our leaving the Wahsatch range, we came in sight of "he lofty peaks of the Sierra Nev ida, which we hailed with a shout of joy, similar to that of a sailor discovering land after a long, tedious voyage, and which awoke echoes in a wilderness never before dis turbed by the human voice. Five hundred miles of an unknown region had been passed, almost the whole distance on foot, and now we stood in full view of our long looked for desideratum. During this timo we had not seen a human being always excepting our unfortunate friends, the Diggers which led us to the inference, that the larger portion of this Great In terior Basin was uninhabited or, at all events, very thinly peopled.

From this point to the Sierra Nevada, our course now lay over a rough, moun tainous country, well watered and timber' ed; and on the second day, we cairvi upon one or two miserable, dilapidated huts which, from all appearance, had long been untenanted and a mile or two far ther on, saw a small party of savages, who, on discovering our approach, lied precipitately to the highlands we proba bly being the first white human beings they had ever beheld.

About noon of the third day we came to a beautiful lake, and going round it, reached the foot of the mountain chain, bounding the Great Basin on the west, just as the sun, taking his diurnal farewell of the snowy peaks above us, seemingly transformed them, by his soft, crimson light, into huge pillars of burnished gold. We now considered ourselves compara tively safe, though by no means out of dan ger; for our route, over these mighty erections of nature, we were well aware, must be one of extreme peril. Unlike the desert, we might not suffer for want of wa ter but, unlike the desert, too, we might with cold, snows, storms, and from hostile savages.

On the succeeding day we began oui ascent. Up, up, up we toil