DELICIOUS DREAMS. 167 
credibly short space of time, constructed for themselves a 
most primitive but excellent protection for the night. 
Selecting two small mesquite trees, growing near each 
other, they brought them together at top, to form the door» 
and then cutting poles, bent them in semicircles from the 
rear, all meeting in a point at the top, and covering this frame 
with blankets and horse-cloths, forming a fac simile of an old 
fashioned gig top, under which they all lay till morning. Our 
sick man was here so ill that we were in doubts about being 
able to get him to camp. We slept restlessly and only from 
sheer fatigue, our misery made more complete, by the attacks 
of musquitoes, gnats, &c., who, like ourselves, seemed to have 
sought shelter in our miserable tent. 
I realized this night what I had often read of, viz.: the 
delicious dreams of water and cooling beverages, persons who 
are suffering from thirst experience. I fancied myself eating 
ice cream, Roman punch and sherbet, and revelled in their 
enjoyment, only to feel ten times more thirsty when I awoke, 
August 5th—Morning dawned upon us with a clear 
unclouded sky, and its first streaks found us on our eastward 
march, glad to find relief even in the motion of our horses 
from the sufferings of the night. 
Much more rain had fallen in the section-we reached after 
a ride of two hours, so that we began to find rain-water in all 
the holes and ravines we passed, and it is truly astonishing 
what a quantity of water the system can hold after a long 
deprivation ; canteen after canteen was emptied, and still 
