AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 87 



out by main force, attaching lassos to their horns. In the 

 swamp were many carcasses of oxen, so many, that the water 

 was unfit to drink. We left here in the afternoon, and follow- 

 ing along Pacific Creek, a tributary of the Colorado, we 

 camped at night near another swamp. About midnight the 

 hungry cattle got into this, and we worked an hour or more 

 in the cold water and mud getting them out. Some w^e were 

 obliged to leave there to die. 



At sunrise we started, and passing over a desert covered 

 with beds of sand and miry flats and sloughs, white with 

 alkali, we camped at noon by a brackish stream. When we 

 resumed our march, we stirred up clouds of saleratus-impreg- 

 nated dust which aggravated our thirst, as we could not drink 

 the water where w^e had camped. Much of the water in this 

 part of the country was the color of weak lye, and tasted simi- 

 larly. I have known the white hair of oxen to acquire a pink 

 tinge from their continued use of it. 



At a place called Deep Hollow w^e saw three black circles of 

 tires and wagon-irons, where the Mormons had burned as many 

 corrals in the previous fall. There were seventy-eight w^agons 

 loaded with provisions for the advance troops of the Utah 

 Expedition, which were two days' march ahead, and which 

 afterwards sorely felt the need of them. The guerilla leader 

 was Lot Smith, a Mormon " Old Put." 



As the cold increased, fuel became plentier in the shape of 

 a large growth of sage-brush. Much of this was dry and 

 dead, and at night we made the scenery luminous with bon- 

 fires, around which we stood or reclined. On the 9th of 

 October we crossed Green River, the Rio Verde of the old 

 Spaniards. The next day we encamped on Ham's Fork, near 

 where lay the carcasses of five hundred cattle belonging to a 

 supply train of the Utah army. They had perished from 

 hunger and cold the preceding winter. A sickening odor 

 was still around the spot, so that we dared not camp near the 

 ford. 



