CHAPTER, SEVENTEEN 
JOURNEY FROM FORT CROCKET 
TO THE SOUTH FORK 
IN August 18th we started from Fort 
O Crocket. Our next objective point was 
the North Fork of the Platte; so our 
direction was generally east. We went 
down the Green River for some miles 
a more, and through a ravine six or eight 
miles long, Brown’s Hole, where steep rocks of sand- 
stone and porphyry rose abruptly on either side at a 
distance of from one hundred to two hundred feet. 
At the end of this gorge we pitched our camp for the 
night. The next morning we scraped together the 
last morsels in our meat bags and ate them in hopes 
of soon getting fresh meat. But our way led over 
a desert sand plain with little grass and no game. In 
the morning we had crossed the Vermillion, a little 
brook with reddish water, which flows into the Green 
River, but at evening we did not even find water. We 
marched on till late at night, and finally laid ourselves 
down, hungry and thirsty, on the sandy soil. The 
