152 Audubon's Western Journal 



his treasures down before his father and family; 

 he then put on the worn red shirt, and with a low 

 bow to ail round him followed our company. 



After a long and tedious ride over a gravelly 

 prairie, with many cacti, musquit and wild sage 

 growing on it, we passed between two ironstone 

 mountains, up a valley to a well of sulphur water 

 which was also pretty well impregnated witii salt, 

 where all took a drink, and going over the next 

 ridge camped in poor grass and took our animals 

 back to water them at the well. Some of the mules 

 drank five buckets of water, one after the other 

 (the common shaker buckets) and the average 

 amount each animal drank may be put down at 

 three and a half. The want of water is the greatest 

 privation you can give a mule, as the flesh literally 

 seems to dry off them, and without water a mule 

 will rapidly fall off from being a good-looking 

 animal, to a skeleton; but good grass and water, 

 not too salt, will in a week restore them wonder- 

 fully. 



On our march today we came to a dry run, what 

 Pennypacker calls "a thunder-shower river," and 

 after digging four feet found better water than we 

 had had for some time. We were all thirsty and 

 drank of it freely. I took two long draughts, and 

 in half an hour was ready for more, and the poor 

 mules had to be kept away by a guard. Some of 

 these ''thunder-storm rivers" rise so rapidly as to 



