82 Audubon s Western Journal 



miles back from the Rio Grande, out of the way 

 of cholera, to feed up our weak, and make our 

 arrangements to leave. I at once ordered from 

 Alexander sixty mules, thirty to be first-class saddle 

 mules, and thirty good, average pack mules. 



It took nearly a month to make all our prepara- 

 tions, wind up our business with Col. Webb and 

 others, and to put our sick men in good travelling 

 condition. When we had removed our provisions 

 from Camp Ringgold, where we had stored them, 

 our heaviest work was done, and we started for 

 Mier, but found we had not mules enough and 



stopped at to get more, and here we also 



repaired the miserable wagons that had been 

 bought at Cincinnati, arranging our guard and 

 other matters. Henry Mallory and I counted our 

 money, and allowed a hundred days as the time 

 requisite for our journey, and our financial calcu- 

 lations gave sixty-six dollars and four cents for 

 each man. 



How the responsibility of taking forty-eight 

 men, most of them wholly ignorant of the life 

 before us, through so strange and wild a country, 

 weighed upon me, I cannot express, but we were 

 too busy to have much time to think, and moved 

 on twenty miles to Mier. Luckily our wagons 

 broke down again, so we concluded to leave them, 

 and lost another week disposing of them, and sel- 

 ling goods we were unable to take. At Mier I saw 



