124 HORSE, FOOT, AND DRAGOONS. 



passes, we can bear it more easily. The eye, too, is refreshed 

 by the wonderful color of the rolling hills far in our front, 

 where the millions of wild flowers covering their smoothly 

 rounded sides blend their bright hues harmoniously in strong 

 contrast with the deep-blue shadows of the mountains. As 

 we near the cotton -woods the rushing of a stream is heard, 

 and we are soon standing on its high banks, looking down 

 upon the swift -flowing torrent. The signal to let our horses 

 drink is given, and we scramble down the steep sides and ford 

 the rapid current, rising almost up to our knees as we sit in 

 our saddles ; the thirsty brutes suck in the sweet water, cooled 

 by the melting snows in the distant mountains. 



The day wears on in this manner; now we traverse tracts 

 of cactus desert, now dip down through some sudden break 

 in the plain, and ford streams more or less deep and rapid ; 

 now we climb over mound-shaped buttes until we enter a little 

 grassy valley in the foot-hills, and halt there to await the ar- 

 rival of the wagon-train, and to make our camp for the night. 

 The horses are immediately unsaddled, hobbled, and driven off 

 by companies to water and to pasture. The men, tired by the 

 long ride, lie about in groups, some dozing, saddles for pillows, 

 under the shelter of leafy little huts, constructed with aston- 

 ishing rapidity from the pliant branches of the dwarf willows, 

 cut with their sharp sheath-knives on the river brink hard by. 

 The indefatigable " Emperor " has already prepared a little 

 "snack" for us to stay our appetites until dinner; and although 

 it consists chiefly of the remnants of the biscuits baked for 

 breakfast, the contents of some round, gaudily labelled tins of 

 beef or tongue, with a taste of jam or a pickle for a relish, 

 and somethins: from a field -flask to wash all down with, the 

 most elaborate picnic spread in the world could not have been 

 done more justice to. The quartermaster rides in just as we 



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