Through Arizona to San Diego 159 



we re-packed and started on for the river which we 

 reached at eight in the morning. Resting here 

 for four hours, we started to make five miles or 

 more; necessity demanded our doing this to arrive 

 at good grass. 



Passing along the sandy trail we saw hundreds 

 of the plumed partridge (the brown-headed). I 

 shot five in about ten minutes. I could not delay 

 longer, as my fast-walking little mule was too jaded 

 to put to the pain of going faster to catch up with 

 the train. These birds, at this season, seem to feed 

 on the seeds of the pig-weed, which is now and then 

 seen in patches of many acres, putting one in mind 

 of old potato fields. The sandy desolation of the 

 river bottom is beyond belief ; nothing but the sand 

 hills of the Carolina coast can compare with it. 



Oct. ^th. A few cotton-woods and scrub-willow, 

 with dried weeds, and some sunflower plants, make 

 thickets here and there, and this is all that is to be 

 seen in the way of vegetation, for about a hundred 

 miles below the Pimos villages, which hundred 

 miles we made in five days, and are now, thanks to 

 a placard at the forks of the road, across the far- 

 famed Gila, in a grassy bottom of coarse swamp 

 tufts, which is better than nothing, but our animals 

 do not seem to like it much, though they eat it, in 

 their starved condition. 



The river here is a very rapid stream at this 

 season, about a hundred and fifty yards wide, and 



